


Sophie Rabbited—The Finding Sophie Before It’s Too Late Job

by crayonbreakygal



Category: Leverage
Genre: Drama, F/M, Family, Past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-15
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-05-12 05:54:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 27,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19222978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crayonbreakygal/pseuds/crayonbreakygal
Summary: Sophie takes off and disappears during the middle of a job.  Takes place season four.





	1. Sophie's Gone

**Author's Note:**

> One, I've always wondered just how much wealth Sophie has accumulated over the years. Two, her family? This is why we needed a season six! Also, it is very possible that this fic will have a sequel, or two. It took me over a year to complete this while working on other fics so who knows. I have another long one in the works too. And I may have an ending to one of my WIPs! Enjoy!

Chapter One—Sophie’s Gone

“Uh, Nate. Sophie rabbited.  I mean, she’s gone.  Off comms.”

Nate turned his head to look at Eliot, who stood directly behind him.  Even before pointing to him, Eliot had peeled off to go check out the room where Sophie was supposed to be.

“You mean she took the comm out or something has happened to her earbud?”

“Nate, all I know is one minute she was on, the next minute, nothing.  I thought she was just being quiet. I didn’t check until just now.”

Nate stood in the hallway, waiting for Eliot to come back with a report on what could have happened. They were supposed to meet up with their mark for the deal to go down. Sophie was their inside man or woman if he wanted to be technical about it.  She had worked her way into the mark’s good graces in a few short weeks, gaining his confidence.  Nothing seemed out of the ordinary that morning when they met up to make sure that this meeting would go according to plan.

“Hardison, did they make her? When did you last hear from her?”

“Nothing, Nate.  Hours.  I hadn’t heard from her in hours.”

“Parker? Anything?”

Nate had tuned out Parker because he had to hear from Hardison first, who was supposed to have eyes on everyone.

“She’s just gone. I can’t find her car. What if they took her? What if the mark made us, made her?  Where is he?”

“He’s in his office,” Eliot concluded, seeing the mark talking to his secretary as he passed by the conference room.  “This is not good, folks.  From what I could see, the mark is calm and collected.  We may have misjudged…”

“We did not misjudge. I did not misjudge this one.  She was here, right?  One minute she was here, the next minute, gone.”

“Nate, the guy’s getting up to go to our meeting. We gotta be in there.”

Eliot was right. They couldn’t blow this now.  Maybe they would find out what was going on with Sophie.

Nate headed down the corridor, looking everywhere for something that might lead him to Sophie.  He’d choke the information out of the mark if the guy gave him any kind of indication that something was wrong.

“Hardison? Anything?”

“I’m going through surveillance right now. Dammit. She’s just too good.”

“You mean she did this on her own?”

“Nate, if someone took her, they’d have to be damn good at concealing her. I’m just not seeing anything right now. No weird deliveries. No one even slightly fitting her description leaving the building in the last twenty minutes.”

“Shit.”

Sophie was supposed to be there, to lead them through all the complications of this con.  Nate would have to pinch-hit, but luckily they had shared everything they knew about the mark, even down to his temperament and how he reacted in stressful situations.  That was Sophie’s job on this.  Make sure the mark was stressed to the max, make a mistake. Then they’d have him where they wanted him.  Nate could only play obnoxious guy so many times before it became unbelievable. And he wasn’t on his A game right at that moment.

“Keep looking.  Signal me if you find anything. Got it?”

“I will. I will.  Just don’t blow this.  I’ll find her.”

Nate had no idea what was going on in Sophie’s head.  She seemed at ease that morning, joking around with him, pushing up his tie for the fifth time as they walked out the door.  They’d been good together these past few months.  Less stress, the jobs were going alright, even though they had the thing over their heads about bugs in the apartment.  No more Moreau, no more Italian threatening him with jail time.  Things were going much better than expected, in every sense of the word.  The problem was he couldn’t let the rest of the team know how well things were actually going.  They wouldn’t understand. Stress was low.  Why introduce another issue to the team?  Lying seemed to be the best course of action regarding him and Sophie’s arrangement.  They didn’t need to know.

Was that why she fled? Was there something going on that he didn’t pick up on?  Or was this related to their latest job?

“Mr. Johnson? Are you with me?” Nate heard the mark say.

“Oh, oh. Yes.  I’m sorry. Continue.  Say, where is your assistant? What’s her name?  Cary, Cory. I don’t remember.”

“Claire.  I don’t know. She was supposed to be here. All the materials were in my office this morning when I got here.”

Sophie had been there.  She had dropped off the materials that Hardison had constructed yesterday. 

“So, you never saw her?  It’s just, I want to make sure this deal doesn’t fall through.”

“No.  It won’t fall through. I need this deal,” the mark told Nate, seeming a little desperate. 

“Yeah, well, swindling people out of millions because you need to pay your gambling debts kinda makes you an ass and a jerk. If you get what I’m sayin’.”

“Hardison, zip it,” Eliot complained.

“Jump drive is in hand,” Parker announced finally.

The meeting was wrapping up. Sophie was still a no show. Dammit, Nate thought.  This is not going the way he had planned it was going to go.

“So, do we have a deal?”

“Of course.  Yes. I think we’re set. Now if you give me some time to verify these figures.”

The mark looked even more anxious than he had at the beginning of the meeting.

“You have everything.  It’s a good deal.  I need to finish this now.”

Nate knew that stringing him along might make him bolt, but without Sophie there to tell them what she knew about this guy, Nate just wasn’t sure if it was going to work or not.

“Nate, pull the trigger on this. Take the deal,” Eliot urged.

“If you can give me two hours, I’ll get back to you.”

“I can take it to your competitor,” the mark answered.

Dammit, he knew this might happen.  What had Sophie found out?

“An hour then.  Just an hour. I know it’s a good deal. I just need an hour.”

“Nate, I’m still not through the footage.  Maybe I’ll have an answer in an hour, but if Sophie doesn’t show up, then we might be out ten million.”

“An hour.  I’ll give you an hour.”

“I’ll be back. Don’t you worry.”

Nate shook hands with the man and quickly exited the building.

“Got her. I think.  That has to be her,” Nate could here Hardison say as he was not more than ten feet from the van.

“She better have a good explanation as to why she didn’t show up to the meeting,” Eliot said as he came around the corner.

Parker popped her head out of the van as she opened the door. When had she gotten back from her errand?  At least she retrieved the information that Nate needed to complete this job.

“Ok, Hardison. Where is she?”

“I have no idea. But she was here.  Parker pointed her out.”

Hardison played back the footage from a few hours before.  Was that her?  Blonde hair, flats on her feet.  The woman was looking down at the ground like she was attempting to not be seen by the camera.

“See, see. Right there. Hands. Those are her hands. I’d know those hands anywhere.”

Hardison stopped on a shot of the woman’s hands.  The long, elegant fingers that tightened his tie that very morning, those fingers that delighted in making him squirm the night before stood out like a sore thumb, so to speak. Parker was right.

“What is she doing?” Nate said out loud.

“That is a person that does not want to be found,” Eliot pointed out.

“Let’s go by her place. Now. We only have fifty-five minutes.”

It took them fifteen with Eliot breaking a few traffic laws to get there that quickly. It, of course, was a different place than the one Sophie had that was blown up by Chaos.  No need to stick around a building where you were supposed to be dead.  She’d found another apartment that looked nicer than the one she had before. 

“When was that video taken, Hardison?”

“Eleven thirty-eight.”

Sophie had left his place around eight forty while he set up elsewhere to gather information from another source. It should have taken her around thirty minutes to arrive at her job.  So, she got there around nine. That would be a usual time that someone would arrive at an office job.  What happened between nine and eleven thirty-eight? She obviously had time to put all the paperwork on the mark’s desk and make her getaway.

“Did you see her arrive?”

“Haven’t looked yet. Too much footage to go through. I just wanted to find her.”

Eliot looked at him as Nate pulled out his keys to find the one to Sophie’s apartment.  Nate knocked once as Eliot put his ear up to the door. He shook his head no that he didn’t hear any movement inside.

“Oh, you have a key,” Parker commented.

Nate opened the door slowly.  Eliot, as always, took point just in case Sophie was in danger and being held hostage.  The motion of his fingers told the rest of the group that it was safe enough to go inside.  The place was trashed.  Drawers were pulled out, the sofa was upended. Everything was in disarray. Eliot put his finger up to his mouth to tell the rest of them to be quiet while he checked out the rest of the place.

Nate was panicking.  Something had happened to Sophie. And when he found out who was trying to hurt her, it wouldn’t be pretty.

“Nothing. She’s not here. The rest of the place is trashed. Nate, I think she’s gone.”

Nate abruptly turned his head to his hitter. “What?”

“It looked like someone had pulled a suitcase out of the closet. It’s the one she likes to carry with her when we go on short hauls. Two pairs of shoes missing. I can tell that because whoever tossed the place didn’t touch the shoes.  Bathroom products have been gone through.  A few things missing. She was here. I’m sure.  And she was in a hurry.”

“She’s in trouble,” Parker pointed out as she bent down to the floor.

“Why? How?”

“Phone,” Parker said as she pulled Sophie’s phone out from underneath a chair. “She dropped this.”

It was Sophie’s real phone, not a burner from any of the jobs.

“The question is what is she running from,” Nate completed the thought that Parker was just about to make.

“Or to. Who is she running to? She could have just taken off finally.  She’s done it before.”

Eliot had a point, but it wasn’t the point that Nate gave any weight to at that moment.  She was definitely running from something. And she left the phone to tell them that she would be contacting them when she was good and ready, not the other way around.

“God, Hardison. Please tell me you have a way to track her?” Nate practically begged the hacker.

“I wouldn’t have known it was her leaving the building if it hadn’t been for Parker. She was that good. If she doesn’t want to be found…”

“Then we think like her. I chased her all over Europe at one point.  I found her each and every time. Doesn’t mean I was in time to stop her.”

“She wanted you to find her, Nate,” Eliot said as he looked through the mess. “This time, she may not.”

“When she left, the last time, you knew where she was, right?” Nate asked Hardison.

“Yes, and no.  I stopped tracking her on the surface, yes.  But I was always passively tracking her. So, I could have found her if I looked. But I didn’t look because she told me not to. If she’s gone to ground, I don’t know if I can find her.”

“Then we’ll look through every single alias, every single sighting. Maybe something will pop up. We have to find her.”

Nate was getting desperate.  What had she gotten herself involved in? Was it an old score, an old enemy?  Did she just need some time alone? That would not explain the destruction at her place. Someone was after her.

“Someone wants to find her. And she obviously has something someone wants. This is a message, to her.  It was messy but professional enough.”

Nate started to head to the door. He had a deal to complete, ten million on the line.

“Nate, don’t take the deal. We can find a different way on this.  Since we don’t know what she found out this morning, there is no way of knowing what this guy is planning.”

“The information is just not there, Nate.”

Both Parker and Eliot were right.  The information that Parker had stolen wasn’t all that they needed. Sophie was supposed to retrieve the rest right after she arrived for work.  It was probably in her possession.

“You think she came back here? Right after going in?”

Think, Nate chanted to himself.  Why would she come back here if she knew she was being followed?

“She came back here before it was tossed. Someone was following her. Is the phone tampered with in any way?”

Parker started tapping on the keyboard but wasn’t having any luck.  Pulling it open, she held it up so that they could all see it.

“Battery is gone as is the sim card. There’s a bug in it though. Still in there.”

Bug in her phone?  They all immediately pulled out their phones, taking the backs off of them.

“Nah, nothing in mine,” Hardison said as he was the first to get it apart.

“Mine’s clean,” Parker commented.

“Nothing on mine.”

Nate only had the burner with him since he didn’t want anyone to find his real phone on him during this job.

“I have the burner Hardison gave me. Mine’s in the van. We should go back to the mark’s office.”

“Nate, you’ve got about five minutes to figure out something or that deal is off.”

Nate realized that everything was going down the tubes if he didn’t figure out what to do while they were on their way back to the mark’s office.

Hurrying back to the van, he found his phone on the floor, which was curious since he was certain it was in the glove compartment.  Taking the back off, he pulled out the battery, along with some kind of small piece of something he bet was a bug of some sort.  His sim card was still intact.

As Eliot drove, Hardison looked at Nate’s phone, trying to figure out what kind of bug it was that someone had placed in his phone. Was it the same person who had bugged his place? Hardison was still working on that one, but Nate was certain he’d find out sooner than later who had it out for them.

“Nate, this is not your sim card.”

“What?”

“If I’m a betting man, and I am, this is Sophie’s.”

“Then she has mine.”

“Probably not.  Putting yours into hers would put you in a world of danger. I don’t think she would do that unless you two have been fighting a lot more than usual.”

Nate glared at him to continue.

“You think she put a blank one in her phone?”

“Possible.  Looks like she had dropped her phone.  Then whoever was tossing her place would have bogus info.”

“So, she made a mistake to make it look like she made a mistake,” Parker sorted out.

“Decoy. Give them what they want, but not quite. That would give her enough time to escape whoever was after her.”

Maybe Eliot was right.  He hoped so.  She was running from something.  Nate just hoped she showed up so that they could help.

“The photos. Where were the photos? I didn’t see them.”

Photos? What photos?  What was Parker talking about?

“She had some photos, of us, on her desk.”

Nate had missed that.  He’d seen them a few times but hadn’t paid attention to them.  Sophie had felt safe enough to have photos of them at her place. That was not the act of a woman who was going to flee at a moment’s notice.  Did whoever was after her know about the four of them?

“Nate, we have five minutes,” Eliot reminded him.

Pushing in the sim card Sophie had left for him in the van, he powered it up.  He was very lucky that they used the same phones.  Hardison had insisted on it, just in case he had to ever fix something if one of them broke.

“She got it. The information we needed. Let’s go.”

That meant she had been in the van after she left those offices of the mark.

“How’d she get in here? I’ve been in here the whole time.”

“Did you get coffee?” Eliot asked.

“Did you go to the bathroom?” Parker asked.

“Hey, I have a small bladder. Just once. Or maybe twice. I had my earbud in the whole time. She must have been quiet as a mouse. There was no way.”

So, she slipped past Hardison, slipped out of the mark’s office unnoticed, packed a bag, and was now off the grid entirely.  Nate didn’t have time to figure out where she was right then. He had to finish off the job, or at least this part of the job.

“The information is here. The deal’s on. Let’s finish this son of a bitch so we can find our grifter.”

Everyone else looked determined and a little worried.  Nate tried to hide the fact that he was scared for her. If she put this much thought into disappearing, would they ever be able to find her, especially if she was in danger?

“It can’t be let’s find a Sophie.  We’ve already done that twice,” Parker rattled off.

Third times the charm.  He just hoped they could find her.

“Twice?” Eliot asked.

“The first time. Before we knew who she was.  Nate wanted to find her.  In Chicago.  Then when she blew us off to find herself? She better not be finding herself again.”

Parker-logic 101 at its finest.


	2. Sophie Does Not Want To Be Found

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sophie is in deep trouble, but does not want the team's help.

Chapter Two—Sophie Does Not Want To Be Found

Sophie didn’t want to be found.  She would prove or disprove how good Hardison was once and for all.  He’d passively tracked her for years, even when she bolted to “find herself”.  Now she needed to disappear so she could solve this little puzzle.  Her team had to be kept safe, even if they didn’t like it.

After giving everyone the slip, she pulled into a motel on the outskirts of Boston. There she’d execute her plan and possibly be back before Hardison called out the cavalry.  If he started searching, he could find more than he bargained.  She just hoped that he didn’t trigger any alerts that were out for any of her aliases.  Scrubbing them clean would take time and lots of cash, most of which she had no access to at the moment.  Most of her cash right then was tied up or inaccessible.

That would be how Hardison would tag her, so she had to be careful. She’d moved whatever she could in the few hours that she had between arriving at the mark’s office and packing to leave.  It was a substantial amount, but totally necessary.

Nate was going to be pissed at her.  Certainly, she could have gone to him, explained the situation. Putting their heads together, maybe they could have thought up a solution to her problem.  That was the last thing she wanted to do, to bring him in on this. There was no way she was putting him in any more danger. He’d run straight into it, not thinking of the consequences, with the others following along.  This was for the best. She’d deal with his anger later.  His trust was hard to gain, easy to lose.  She’d just lost that trust in mere hours.  Every single time she was out of his sight, he would think she was playing him. Let him think that in this one instance.  It would keep him safe.

Sophie unfolded the piece of paper, looking at the information word for word. If she didn’t follow the instructions to the letter, she didn’t even want to contemplate what might happen.  Her crew, her family meant more to her than her own life.  She never thought that would happen.  Disappearing was her specialty.  After each job, after each con, she’d disappear with the money, with the art, never to be seen again.  Don’t get attached, don’t leave a trace. Her traces were left everywhere. The pictures that she managed to grab before she left.  The books she’d been given by Eliot to learn how to cook.  The boots that Parker supposedly bought with her own money instead of stealing.  The cards that had photos of all the Doctor Who characters so that every time she played Hardison a game of cards, she could be reminded of home.  Nate’s soap, the kind that he used when he was at her place, still sat in the soap dish. It was too masculine for her to use, so she found a place for it among all her scents. 

Sitting on the edge of the bed, Sophie crumbled, drawing her legs up tightly against the rest of her body.  If she didn’t fix this, it would all come crashing down.  Leverage would be no more. There would be no more late-night planning sessions, no more cons, no more squabbling, no more joking, no more dinners cooked by Eliot. No more Nate holding onto her in the middle of the night, awakened by some nightmare about his past.  That was because none of them would have a future. 

The man that had initially contacted her had been thorough. He had all their names, many of their aliases, and a line to many of their cohorts and friends that they had made over the years.  It wasn’t just the five of them.  It was Tara and Peggy and Hurley, Bonanno, Sterling, Maggie, Cora, many of their clients.  No one would be safe unless she did exactly what she was told to do. She leafed through all the pictures she was sent, over a hundred in all. 

Eliot would be so angry that he couldn’t protect her on this one, that she had taken it upon herself to protect them, to secure their futures. She’d taken that out of his hands.  There were no second chances on this.  No plan B or C or even M. She would never let it get to M because Hardison was not going to die because she hadn’t followed instructions.  Parker could rant all she wanted when Sophie got back if she survived this.  She’d take whatever punishment they had deemed necessary.

The phone she was carrying rang out suddenly, bringing her out of her musings.  Waiting until the fifth ring, she answered it slowly, controlling her breathing, where just a minute before, she felt like hyperventilating. 

“Yes.”

“Is it set?”

“Yes.”

“Then wait for further instructions.”

“Yes.”

With a soft click, the conversation was over. She would hand over everything she had, lock, stock and barrel, millions, every single piece of artwork still in storage, every single piece of property she owned. She just hoped it was enough.


	3. She's Cleaned Out Everything

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hardison figures out some of what Sophie is planning. It's not good.

Chapter Three—She’s Cleaned Out Everything

“She cleaned out her accounts. And when I mean cleaned out, I mean liquidated them. How did she do that without me knowing?”

Hardison always kept passive surveillance on all their accounts, whether it be cash, securities, the stock market, whatever any of them had in any of their aliases.  Sophie had quite a few. It had taken months to gather all of hers, that first year spent collecting data and burying it deep. He still didn’t know where most of the artwork she never liquidated ended up.  She lost a few pieces on the con in England, but nothing of significance.  Managing to clean out her storage in Los Angeles quickly and quietly after that first year, he still hadn’t tracked most of it down. One con after another hadn’t made that possible.  But the passive alerts on her accounts was his specialty.

Parker had more damn cash on hand than anyone else.  He bet that if he looked hard enough, he would find her secret hiding place for all of it.  Rolling around in it, smelling it on occasion.  Crazy assed woman.

Eliot hid his too, even more carefully since he had asked Hardison’s advice.  A lot of it had gone to his sister and nephew, but even that was hidden behind many aliases and shell corporations that Hardison had set up.  It was airtight.

Nate’s, on the other hand, was simple.  He had one account, in his own damn name.  Hardison had been tempted to hide it just to see if Nate was actually watching it, making sure no one hacked into it.  The money either donated or plowed back into the business was all the activity Hardison could see. Until one day he stumbled on exactly how Nate had fooled him.  So, Nate hid his money as well. It just wasn’t as apparent as the others.  A little nest egg had been growing every year when Nate felt the urge to put some cash into it. There were times when their alternative revenue stream actually was revenue based.  Not all their clients were destitute and needed the money.  They all did get paychecks now and again.  That red Tesla that first year they were together had come from somewhere.  That Mercedes parked in the lot behind Nate’s place had cost a bit of money too.

Hardison just thought he would never see the day when Sophie was entirely liquidated.  He could trace where she had sent the money if given time. It looked as if she was planning this for a while now, or maybe this was her contingency if something went wrong. No issue with that.  Hardison had planned for something similar if it all went to pot. 

How was he going to tell Nate, that she had planned this?  He really didn’t know if she actually planned it all or if she just activated her plan.  Nate’s wrath could sometimes be just a look, a frown, his hands bunched inside his pockets, his blue eyes piercing you until you gave up whatever you were going to give. He’d seen it too many times to not know the look.  He had given Eliot that look, right after Hardison had informed the group about Moreau. He had given that look to Parker, right after Parker had mistakenly told that young girl who boosted cars what their plan was.  He gave that look to Hardison only once, and that was enough.  Sophie was on the receiving end of that look way too many times. Every time she went off script, the two Davids, the potato job, the car boost job (Nate was walking funny for days).  How she survived it was way beyond Hardison’s pay grade.

He had to tell Nate, explain it to him. He just couldn’t believe that Sophie would leave them again. Something was definitely wrong. He just hoped that she didn’t get hurt in the process.

“Nate, you’re not gonna like this.”

“It can’t be as bad as her disappearing. Because that’s bad,” Parker pointed out as they gathered after finishing the con they had worked on for three fricking months.

“She liquidated all of her accounts,” Nate replied, not even breaking stride as he stood in front of the counter in his apartment.

“What? She’s running?  That’s gotta be it. It’s a payoff of some sort.”

“I don’t know how she did it in such a short time.”

“Because Sophie Devereaux always has an out, Hardison.  How much?  Ten, twenty million?” Nate asked him as he turned to the displays.

“Fifty.”  Nate’s eyes opened wide, obviously impressed at the figure.  “I showed her a few tricks on investing. What she hadn’t spent on real estate was in these accounts.”

Hardison put up all the accounts on the screens. 

“Why so many accounts? How was she going to touch her money and know where it was?” Parker, always the pragmatist. 

“Sweetheart, she didn’t need to roll around in it to see where it was.  She was too busy buying up properties around the world. See?” Eliot pointed to the screen.

“She sold them all or is in the process of selling them all.  She could get another ten to twenty out of those. I’d say twenty if I was a betting man.  I have no idea what she has in art though. She’s kept that well-hidden.”

“A hundred million dollars,” Nate told them, exasperated now. “That’s what she’s shooting for.  Hardison, dig out every single con she pulled over the years. All the big scores.”

“I don’t understand. She never got more than a million or two off of each of them,” Eliot said as he sat down next to Hardison.

They all turned to him like he knew everything and nothing all at once.

“She stole the David,” Nate pointed out.

“Yeah, but was that her biggest score?”

Eliot was right.  Sophie was not small time but always was careful to make sure the marks wrote off their losses and got the insurance to cover it.  Her crimes were crimes that were immediately forgotten about once that check cleared from the insurance company.

“So, it was someone who didn’t get a payout, who was taken in by her charms, fleeced for some painting or bauble.  What could she have taken that was that important?”

Nate paced back and forth as Hardison kept pouring over the information.

“If she felt threatened, wouldn’t she do anything to fix that?” Parker finally asked.

Nate stopped directly in front of her, having that revelation moment he got when Hardison knew there would be a plan in the works.

“I can take care of any threat…” Eliot started, to be stopped cold by Nate’s hand.

“You can’t be in four places at once.  Just like you couldn’t be in a hundred places at once.  That hundred number is significant.  It wasn’t just us, Eliot. It was the whole damn operation, from our clients, to whoever has helped us out over the years. That’s why she gave me her chip. Someone had bugged her phone. Mine too.  I don’t think it had anything to do with the passive bugs Hardison found a few months ago.  This person, or persons, is out for blood. If it was just us, she would have said something.”

Nate was right, dammit.  There had to be more than just the four of them involved in this.

“Pull up her phone records, her call list, any numbers she has stored.”

As Hardison watched all the information on the screen, he realized that Nate was right.  Her contact list was extensive, just as his was. Nate’s was probably even longer. 

“Maggie, Tara, Peggy, even Sterling. She had every single phone number, address, hell she even has a few aliases of Tara’s stored on there. We could have taken care of this. What is she doing?”

Eliot was pissed that Sophie had taken it upon herself to fix this. Hardison could almost see Eliot’s blood boil to the surface.  Nate was way too calm though, which scared Hardison even more.  Now that Nate had a target, which was most definitely not Sophie now, he could concentrate on taking that bastard down. Where Sophie was concerned, it wouldn’t be pretty and it might get bloody.  Arms crossed, feet apart, Nate looked at the screens like they were telling him more secrets than Hardison could ever dream.

A beep of a computer took Hardison out of his fantasy of ripping apart whoever did this to Sophie. Tapping a few keys on the laptop, Hardison finally had a bit of good news to share with the rest of them.

“I may have a line on where Sophie is. Don’t know if she’s still there, but it’s something.”

Both Eliot and Parker went into gathering mode, tossing Hardison his laptop bag faster than he could have found it. The two of them could clear out quicker without a trace if they had to.  Two minutes and they were ready. Nate still stood in front of the screens, head somewhere else with the chaos going on around him.

“Nate, let’s go,” Eliot urged.

“Eliot, whoever is doing this is still watching us.”

“Then we split up, meet there. I’ll take Hardison. It shouldn’t be hard to lose a tail.”

Parker was right.  They could regroup and figure out how to get to Sophie without being seen.

“Whoever is doing this knows exactly where Sophie is.  What they don’t know is we know.”

“What? What do we know other than where Sophie might be?” Eliot urged Nate on with his hand gestures.  “Oh, if they know we’re helping her, it’ll mess everything up.”

“So how do we get out of here without being seen?” Parker asked with a smile on her face.

His girl already knew the answer to that question.  It was just her way of telling them all she knew exactly what to do.

“Just as long as I don’t have to crawl in anything hideous,” Hardison got out, only to realize that was exactly what Parker had planned.  “Alright, I’ll turn the program on. Never thought we’d use it.”

That massive hole that Eliot had chainsawed through Nate’s wall that first year they were in Boston wasn’t just for setting up their office. It was also a way out just in case they were ever trapped in the office by some bad guy.  No one knew it was there. It just looked like any old room with a lot of equipment, computers and surveillance supplies.  Hardison had made an outside entrance just after the Russians and Nate’s dad had invaded their space.  Contingencies on top of contingencies. He wasn’t going to ever be in plan M mode.

“If I get any spiders in my hair, I swear someone is gonna pay. You hear me,” Hardison grumped.

“I hope you know what you’re doing, Nate,” Eliot asked the boss.

“Let’s go steal a witch,” Nate told the others.

“Wait, I thought it was bitch because you certainly call Sophie that on occasion.”

Parker was right, yet again.  Sophie was the biggest, baddest bitch he’d ever seen.  She could take down a man with just a look and a flutter of her eyelashes.  Now that she would have her whole crew behind her on this one, she could use her magic once again.


	4. Nate’s Not Happy, At All

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Why hadn't Sophie come to Nate?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eek, didn't realize how short this chapter was.

Chapter Four—Nate’s Not Happy, At All

Nate needed a drink in the worst way, which was right that instant. A whole bottle probably wouldn’t calm his nerves. Sophie had purposely ditched them to solve something that had been her fault in the first place.  Well, not totally her fault, but she had been involved. 

While Nate always went for the cons through someone’s head, to mess with them until they gave up the goods, Sophie played around with people’s hopes and dreams, whether it be just for a kiss, a roll in the hay, or to marry her.  Many a man had lost out because of Sophie’s charms, himself included.  She was more slippery than an eel and just as shocking.  Over the past few years, her attitude had changed, at least toward him.

Why hadn’t she come to him?  Setting this up would have been child’s play, he thought. Then he figured out it wouldn’t have been child’s play. That’s what the person who caused this wanted them to think.  Because of her heart con, they all were in danger, even if the person causing this only had minor contact with Sophie at the time her con was going on. It was always the ones where you thought they didn’t care.  Then they did care, which put Sophie in trouble, along with anyone who had ever had contact with her.

Would this person care if Sophie had turned her life around?  He doubted it.  This was the kind of person that carried grudges for years, decades, then decided to act upon it when it seemed to be most convenient to them. It was verifiably very inconvenient for the rest of them.  Take a person down when they were moving toward something solid. Not that Sophie ever relaxed her guard. But she had with Nate and the rest of her team.  And with all those people out there they had helped.


	5. Eliot Trusts Sophie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It still was his job to keep them all safe.

Chapter Five—Eliot Trusts Sophie

“You think she knows we’re coming?” Hardison asked as they pulled up to where Sophie might be staying.

“She should know we wouldn’t stop,” Eliot mused as he opened the door to the van.

It had taken them too long to coordinate how they were going to get to Salem.  They’d split into three groups, Hardison and Parker, himself, then Nate just to make sure they weren’t followed.  Hardison was scrubbing every single camera he could along the way.  Meeting in Salem had been a good choice. The town was old and probably didn’t have as many cameras. 

It had taken some time for Eliot to ever trust Sophie again after the Davids job in Los Angeles.  She’d conned them, wanting them both for herself.  He guessed they were lucky she had the other one or their con would have taken a different direction.  He watched as she pushed and pulled their mastermind, as she helped teach Parker the ways of the world, and how she mothered Hardison, making him a better grifter in addition to making sure he did things like shower and ate real food.  For Eliot, she had become a friend, someone he could relate to, grumble with (usually about Nate), and keep the reins on the other three so they wouldn’t get hurt. 

So why didn’t she trust him?  It was his job to keep them safe from whatever. It didn’t matter if it was from a past job, a past mistake.  He’d take it up with her after this was solved.  He would have to get in line though because Nate had been spitting mad right before they left his place.  Eliot had suspected that the two of them meant more to each other than just friends, spending an inordinate amount of time together, silent communication from across the room.  They probably thought they were being careful so that no one would find out.  Hell, Eliot was there in the damn room in San Lorenzo, Sophie buried under the covers.  Her shoes peeking out from underneath the bed was the first clue.  They weren’t fooling anyone.

Rabbiting wasn’t Sophie’s style.  She usually fought for what she wanted now, instead of disappearing.  She was the first to pull them back together from the fiasco in Los Angeles.  Leaving months later, he had understood her choices, but she’d done it in front of everyone.  She wasn’t hiding, she was contemplating.  He did realize that when she was conning people, she could disappear with the best of them.  He had done the exact same thing on many jobs.  It kept you safe. 

If she got hurt on this, he’d never forgive himself.  She hadn’t felt it necessary to seek out his help. He could understand Sophie not wanting the others to be involved.  It was her burden to bear, whoever had come after her after all these years. It had to be someone from her past.  When he found this person, there would be hell to pay. He had already started to put feelers out for whoever had threatened Sophie.  He just hoped that they were in time.


	6. Does Parker Trust Sophie?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Parker finds where Sophie is staying.

Chapter Six—Does Parker Trust Sophie?

Parker knew she could get in and out of the place where Sophie was staying easily.  The building was old, which meant there wouldn’t be any large air ducts.  But she could slip into other places unnoticed without having to resort to enclosed spaces.  Only modern buildings or large buildings retrofitted had large air ducts.  She wasn’t stealing a piece of art. She was going to steal Sophie back and keep her safe.

No more leaving to find yourself.  Why couldn’t Sophie have found herself in Boston?  Parker had found herself or had found a family that helped her find herself.  Only Sophie hadn’t followed the plan, leaving less than a year after they finally settled in Boston.  Parker liked Boston.  Lots of places to case, even if she never did follow up on stealing anything from them. Hey, it was a hobby.

Parker shivered in the cold, feeling it in her bones that a storm was brewing.  Salem was by the water, which meant that the air was wetter, whipping through the jacket that Parker had pulled on quickly before they left.  She hated, hated cold and wet weather. It made it harder for her to work.  Looking up at the ominous clouds on the horizon, Parker bet that if they stayed for more than a few hours, they’d be hit by freezing rain or possibly snow. She hadn’t looked at the forecast before they left.

Sophie hadn’t trusted them. She hadn’t trusted them to help her. She hadn’t trusted them to figure out a solution to whatever was going on.  She hadn’t trusted them to have her back. Wasn’t that what family was for, to be there in times of need?  She just hoped that Sophie hadn’t gotten herself so far in, that there would be no way to get her out. 

As Parker walked down the street, she spotted Hardison tucked into a side street, in the van.  They had agreed that the only way they would be able to avoid being followed was to divide and conquer.  She had lost her tail not long after Boston.  The tail was good, but not good enough. She hadn’t picked up another one, but her disguise probably helped with that. The dark wig, plus goth makeup, made her look much younger and not so menacing.  Sophie had helped her with this persona on one of their cons. It hadn’t taken much to put it together since the one bag she grabbed on her way out had the outfit tucked inside, along with a stash of money and a new ID.  Hardison thought of everything.  Why hadn’t Sophie thought of everything?

Eventually, they’d get the whole story.  Parker hadn’t realized that her feelings were hurt, immensely.  She had trusted Sophie with so much over the last few years. For her to just disappear would take a lot to get over.

It didn’t take Parker long to jimmy the lock on the window where Sophie was supposedly staying.  Since it was near dusk, the parking lot that the room backed up to was in shadow. With her dark clothing and dark wig, hopefully, no one would see her.  Sliding in quietly, Parker looked about the room, spying Sophie’s travel case sitting neatly on the floor.  But no Sophie. So, she was here. On the bed was a thick envelope. Parker quietly opened it up, thumbing through the contents.  Someone was very thorough.

“Nate, I think I know what’s going on. Sophie’s here. Just not in the room.”

“Dammit,” Parker could hear him say over the comm.

“Damn old town. I’m not picking her up on the two traffic cams I have up.”

“I’ll start making a circuit around the building,” Eliot added to Hardison’s information.  “I haven’t spotted any tails, although if they’re tourists, it might be hard.”

“It’s cold.  Most tourists would be inside right now.  Storm’s coming,” Nate pointed out.  “Hardison, we need rooms.”

“Booked the premium family suite right next to hers.”

“Just as long as it has heat,” Parker told the others.

Blowing on her hands, Parker made her way over to the door to Sophie’s room.  As quietly as she could, she peeked out the door to the hallway.  No one in sight.

“Hallway’s clear. So, who is going to check in?”

“I’ll do it,” Nate told the others.  “Parker, make sure there are no bugs in her room. Eliot, get up there and help her. Make it quick.”

“What about me?”

“Hardison, hold up.  Keep searching the area. There has to be someone watching that inn.  It could be anyone.  Don’t discount anyone.  Are we clear?”

“Crystal.  I’ll run facial recognition on everyone in the area.”


	7. They Find Her

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They finally make contact with Sophie. Nate puts two and two together, as he always does.

Chapter Seven—They Find Her

Nate grabbed his hat, pulling it over his ears. It was getting really cold outside.  Snow was forecast for later, so he hoped that they could get out of town before it hit.  Booking the room was just a precautionary measure.  Getting socked in wouldn’t be his first choice.

He just hoped that if they did have someone watching the place, his disguise would hold up.  Buttoning up the peacoat tight, he hunched over as he walked to the door of the inn.  If he looked older than he was (and he certainly felt like he’d aged a hundred years in the last few hours) and walked with a limp, then he hoped that would be enough to not look like Nate Ford.  Nate Ford would stride into the inn, that cocky son of a bitch.  This persona, with the limp and pinched face, would look like an older gentleman checking into his room.  With his bag over his shoulder, he pushed open the door to the inn.

A fire burned in the fireplace to the right as he walked in.  With a gruff voice, he pulled out his glasses, the ones he used for reading and addressed the young lady at the counter.  He kept his voice low, like he had a cold, so as to not attract anyone lounging in the lobby.  There were a few people, one couple who obviously was there on the honeymoon, but could be plants, a family of three that looked as if they were off to dinner, and an elderly woman who held a knitting bag in her hands, like she was trying to find a comfortable chair to sit and knit. While he was checking in, she chose a seat by the fire.  The family of three looked at brochures that were bunched up on a table.  Nate watched as the girl picked one up, dark brown eyes lighting up as she pointed to one of them.

“Hardison, you picking up anything?”

“Checking now. Nope on the little girl.  Father has a DUI from twenty years ago.  Young couple, nothing.  Oh, now what’s this?  That old lady in front of the fire has popped up.  British passport.  Something just isn’t right.  Let me see here.”

Nate turned slowly like he was just taking in the lobby. The woman did not look up from her knitting, but there indeed was something off about her.

“You thought you could hide that information. Not on my watch.  Nate, she was MI6 back in the day.  I wouldn’t trust her at all if you know what I mean.  You think that Eliot’s killed people.”

Eliot growled over the comms.

“This woman is an assassin.  As in she will kill you dead with those knitting needles. Because she can.”

“Nate, get out of there.”

“Working on it,” Nate mumbled.

“Oops, one of the newlyweds is popping up.  NSA. The guy.  The place is crawling with spooks. Damn, the bride is CIA.  What the hell?”

“Shit,” Eliot swore.

Nate watched the scene, hoping that there wasn’t some kind of shootout because there were civilians.  A few others passed through, a housekeeper, a maintenance man.  The family left, which made Nate feel a little better.  The woman at the front desk handed him his key and gave him instructions on where his room was.  As Nate turned to leave, he noticed that the NSA man looked him over, but hugged his “bride” tight.  The woman with the knitting glanced up just as Nate pushed his glasses up.  As slowly as he could without raising suspicion, he made his way out the side door to find the other building.  There were a few people here and there, a few workers of the inn taking out the trash.

Sophie, where are you, Nate chanted in his mind.  Parker found your room. Your stuff was there.

“Do you need help finding your room, sir?”

Nate never felt so glad to hear that voice in his life.  It was Sophie, Irish accent thick. He didn’t want to turn just in case someone was casing the parking lot.

“It’s bone chillin’ cold out here,” Nate grumbled, handing her his bag as he did. “Looks like there’s gonna be a storm comin’.”

“Looks like it, sir.”

As he slowly made his way to the other part of the inn, he noticed the family that had left not long before.  The woman of the group was paying way too much attention to what he and Sophie were doing.

“Woman, two o’clock,” he told Sophie as they made it to the door.

“How long are you staying, sir?”

“Granddaughter’s birthday, so a couple of days.”

“MI6.”

NSA, MI6, CIA. What the hell is going on?  Sophie was a criminal, sure.  But she was a thief, a grifter, not a terrorist.

“Huh?  Facial recognition did not pick that one up.  Damn.  Gotta do more work on it.”

“Hardison,” Nate warned the younger man.  “Who is staying next to us and Sophie?”

“Rooms are empty.”

“I’ll check them out,” Eliot replied.

“Careful. There have to be eyes everywhere.”

Nate slipped Sophie an earbud as she opened the suite that Hardison had booked mere moments before.

“Changed the records to make it look like you booked the suite months ago. Let’s just hope that they didn’t have all the records beforehand. And Soph, you have some ‘splainin’ to do.”

“Room checks out. It’s clean. So was Sophie’s room, although the phone’s bugged.”

“Hey, check under the bed,” Hardison suggested.  “You never know.”

Nate hadn’t actually had much time to actually check out Sophie’s disguise until then. It was good, really good.  If he hadn’t known her voice, he wouldn’t have been able to spot her on the street. 

“Listening equipment?” Nate asked the hacker.

“Got it handled.  They ain’t gonna like it because it’s gonna jam their signals something fierce.”

“Will it jam ours?” Eliot asked as he slipped back into Sophie’s room.

“Nah.  Different frequency.  Let’s just hope they don’t start poking around though.  It’s not foolproof.”

“Long enough for us to get the story,” Parker said.

Nate could hear the worry and concern in the thief’s voice. 

“Here you go, sir. Is there anything else?”

“Gotta turn in early tonight. Big day tomorrow.”

“Have a good night,” Sophie replied.

Nate slipped a piece of paper into her hand like he was giving her a tip.

“Oh, oh, my nephew is gonna be here shortly, just in case you see him. Shorter guy, dark hair. Glasses.”

“Great.  That means I have to crawl back out the window,” Eliot complained.  “Hardison, get your ass in here.  Be stealthy.”

“Be stealthy? Seriously?  I’m gonna be as stealthy as the stealthiest person on the planet. You think they can see me in the dark, with no moon and a storm coming?”

“Just don’t trip on something,” Parker reminded him.

“It was just that one time.”

“Two times,” Eliot chimed in.

Nate could hear Sophie knocking on the door beside his suite, which was actually hers. He hoped that her alias would hold up.  He’d be the only one not in the room with her since he had no idea if he could get into hers without being seen.

After hearing a few knocks against the wall directly in front of him, Nate figured out that Hardison probably had finished crawling through the window and was setting up his equipment to block anyone from listening to them.

“Nate, just let me explain.”

Not a I’m sorry or are all of you alright. She didn’t even ask about the job she almost blew sky high. 

“Save it. Eliot, any ideas?”

“Nate, this isn’t a job.  Do you understand?”

Sophie sounded frantic.

“Nate, she’s right,” Parker chimed in.

“Why is there MI6, NSA, and CIA in the lobby? Why, Sophie?  We don’t deal with them, ever. What did you get yourself involved in? Who did you con?”

“No one.  I don’t ever deal with them.  Except for Sterling, but that was before.  There might be an Interpol agent lurking around also.”

“Jesus, woman, what did you do?” Hardison exclaimed.

“They’re here to catch the person I’m supposed to meet.  We cannot let them take that person in, do you understand? It’s a matter of life or death, Nate.”

“Nate, she’s telling the truth.  There’s an envelope on her bed.  They have information on everyone. Pictures, descriptions, addresses, aliases, jobs. Whoever did this was thorough.  Too thorough.”

“Sophie, what the hell is going on?” Nate finally asked.

For all that to happen, for everything to come crashing down around their ears just because of one of Sophie’s marks coming for her, he’d never forgive her.

“This isn’t just about those photos, those people. There’s more to this. Please, just let me explain.”

“Who’s this?” Parker asked.

Nate could kick himself for not being in the same room.  This was just pissing him off even more not seeing what they were seeing.

“Eliot, get me in that room, now,” Nate demanded.

“There’s CIA in the room across the hall now. Thermal imaging is picking up at least two others. And by the looks of things, they are pissed they can’t hear anything.”

“Sophie, now,” Nate almost yelled back at her.

“I’m not doing this to hurt anyone. I swear.”

“Just tell me what the hell is going on.”

“If I don’t turn over all of it, and I mean all of it, we are blown. Every single person we’ve ever dealt with is going to be harassed, outed, arrested, hunted down. I can’t let that happen.  They’re going to take her. I can’t let that happen.”

“Who, Soph?  Who?”

Without even being in the room, Nate had it figured out.  Putting two and two together, he started thinking about what they could do to get out of this with the team intact.  Dealing with these many agencies at once, taking on a would-be kidnapper who knew exactly who Sophie was and what she’d done over the past twenty some odd years, was a daunting task, especially since they had no time to plan and no backups in the wings.

“Nate?”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Tell you what?” Hardison innocently asked.

“Tell you what?  That part of my life?  How would I have told you?”

Nate sat down on the sofa, head held between his hands.  He thought he knew her, thought he knew every single thing about her. Her past though, he knew only bits and pieces.  Her time doing cons, traveling the world, he only knew what she told him or what he’d gathered on each con she pulled.  He didn’t know what she did on her off hours. There were still aliases he had no idea were in existence.  Hardison probably knew a little more about those, but Nate had never asked. It hadn’t mattered. Until now.

“How long? I mean…”

“Thirteen.”

Sam would have been thirteen, his birthday having passed several months prior. Nate had been a mess, drinking until he passed out that day. Sophie had understood and had supported him, getting him through it.  He couldn’t say that it was easier with each passing year, but it wasn’t as gut-wrenching as it had been those first few years. He just wanted to die those first years after losing Sam. 

“Why?”

“You’re asking me why? I had no choice.”

Nate could hear over the comms the hurt in Sophie’s voice. He imagined that there were probably tears flowing. 

“Nate, this isn’t the time,” Eliot reminded him, voice quiet.

“Let’s just focus, alright?  We got maybe two minutes before someone’s gonna come banging this door down.”

“Follow me,” Parker said over the comms.

“I’m going through the front door.  Nephew,” Eliot told the others.

Nate parked himself in one of the chairs, hands gripping the arms until his knuckles were white.

“Nice to see you, grandpa,” Eliot announced as he entered the room.

He pointed to Nate to behave himself, opening up the window to Nate’s right.  Sophie and Hardison would have to climb a bit since the room he was in was on the opposite side of the building and didn’t have an easily climbed deck like Sophie’s did.

Eliot, as quietly as he could, pulled Sophie and Hardison inside, while Parker took up the rear. They were so lucky that it was now pitch-black outside, snow spitting out of the sky. It was cold, bitterly cold now. It did nothing to cool his anger. Her secret had put everything they held dear in jeopardy.


	8. Sophie Hadn't Told Them

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sophie finally confesses and tells the gang what's up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First big reveal.

Chapter Eight—Sophie Hadn’t Told Them

Sophie had wiped the tears away before making that climb.  She trusted Parker to get them inside safely before anyone saw them.  She just hoped she could make the climb with her arms shaking as they did.  And it wasn’t from the cold.

She hadn’t told him. She hadn’t thought it mattered.  It was in her past.  Seeing her auntie again (who wasn't her auntie, really) had dredged up all those old feelings.  Nate’s attitude was making it infinitely worse.  How was she to know this would happen? She had thought all those years ago she was doing the right thing.  It had been the right thing. She was ill-equipped to handle it on her own.  It had been a good solution to a bad situation. 

Nate glared at her as she entered the room from the window.  A cold breeze blew in with her, sending chills up and down her spine.  Nate’s eyes bored into hers, sending even more chills throughout her body.  Why was the way he was acting make her feel so horrible?  It wasn’t his life. He really hadn’t known her thirteen years ago.  They were only acquainted through crime, but they most certainly were not friends then. That didn’t happen until later.

Eliot turned the television on, volume up a little, but not enough to arouse suspicion.

“Better hope they don’t have thermal,” Hardison whispered.

Ripping off his hat, Nate leaned forward, raking his hands through his curls, putting his hair in even more disarray. 

“Why?” Nate asked Sophie. “Anything else you wanna tell us?”

“I didn’t ask you to come here.”

“If you had, you might be in a better position…,” Eliot started.

“Don’t tell me what my position is,” Sophie growled back to the hitter.

“You didn’t trust us,” Parker softly told the grifter.

She didn’t trust them with this. Only this. Now she was starting to regret it, especially since the look on Nate’s face went from anger to hurt back to being pissed off at her. He didn’t share every single thing with her, so why should she?

“I made a mistake.”

“A very big mistake,” Hardison chimed in.

Eliot smacked Hardison upside the head for that comment.

“You should have told me,” Nate finally said.

She’d broken him. There was no going back to the way they were. There was no “we” anyway, so why was she worried about what he thought?  Was it possibly because she was so far in love with him that hurting him felt like she was being pummeled?  Her travels across Europe, conning people into giving her their riches, forgetting about her past, flirting with a handsome insurance agent who was not attainable, had been a fairytale.  Fairytales had morals to their stories, had bad guys and good guys.  The good guys won in the end.  Ride off into the sunset. Only real life wasn’t like that.

“What’s her name?”

“Lily. I don’t know if they kept the name. I didn’t get…they wouldn’t let me hold her. Thought it was for the best. She was premature.  He, um, he had pushed me and I fell.  He’d been drinking.”

Sophie could see out of the corner of her eye Parker trying to not cry while Hardison just shook his head. She didn’t know whether it was in disgust for what William had done to her or the fact that she never got to hold her daughter after giving birth to her.

“I’m sorry,” Eliot finally said to her.

“Sorry that I didn’t keep my only child or the fact that I almost died because of that son of a bitch?”

Sophie hadn’t wanted to sound defeated or angry with them, but that’s what she felt right at that moment.  Defeated because if she didn’t hand over her whole fortune, amassed from more than twenty years of grifting and angry that she let herself get into this predicament in the first place.

“What do you need for us to do?” Nate asked, not looking at her.

“Nothing. I have this in hand. I turn over the money. She is not harmed.”

“Soph, there’s NSA, CIA, MI6, and possibly Interpol at our doorstep. There’s more to this…”

“Alec, I know. Just let me do this.”

“No,” Nate informed her, looking up from his seat.  “Once you give them what they want, it’s not going to go the way you think it will.”

“They’re guarding her.”

“You think one MI6 agent is going to be able to stop someone determined to kidnap a Countess?”

“She’s thirteen, right? How is she a Countess?” Parker asked.

“She’s not, yet.  She’s Lady Lily Edwards until Auntie dies. She’s the only heir.”

“I thought you had to be married to…oh,” Hardison stopped. “Apparently my research skills are very rusty.”

“You just didn’t look in the right place,” Sophie sadly smiled back at him.

“Seven years to establish the long con. How long were you married to him?” Nate asked.

“A year. It wasn’t supposed, I just, I got in too deep.”

“Remember what I told you about the heart con,” Nate reminded her.  “How’s the burn?”

Sophie really wanted to reach over and slap Nate until he actually felt what she felt.  As she looked into his eyes though, she saw the pain that filled them.  Lily was almost the same age as Sam would have been. They were so close in age. She had pulled a con, one that Nate had almost caught her, while she was a month pregnant. He never knew and she never told him.  He hadn’t known her very well back then, just that she was a grifter.  He definitely didn’t know Charlotte, if just by the reaction he gave when she reminisced with Auntie.  He still knew so little of her life back then.

“William, he found out what I was. Shoved me down a set of stairs so I’d lose the baby. As luck would have it, I didn’t.  He took the baby away, banished me. Four years later, he was dead.  Drunk driving. By then, it was too late.”

“He took your baby?  Why? How? Why would he do such a thing?”

Oh, how innocent Parker could seem sometimes.

“Because if she didn’t leave, he would have ruined you?”

Oh, how much of an asshole Nate Ford still was, even after all they had maybe meant to each other.

“Unfortunately, it wasn’t just ruining me. Jailing me.  That was going to be his first step. Then it would be hurting the ones that I loved including my whole family. He was very thorough. He was even more of a bastard than you are, Nate.  He tried to kill me and almost succeeded.  I almost died after that fall.”

“So, he’s dead. Who is after you? Why, after all this time, would they come after you? You did exactly what you were supposed to do.”

Eliot was right. She had done exactly what William had told her to do.  Disappear and everything would be exactly the way it should have been.  She would fade into the woodwork, her daughter would be raised by nannies, and William would save face to the rest of his world.

“Because the Countess is dying and Lily is her only heir. And I never divorced William.”

Nate’s eyes widened at that announcement.

“You sure he’s dead?” Hardison quipped.

“I made certain. You can never be too careful,” Sophie answered back.

“But your title of Duchess isn’t real,” Nate surmised as he arose from his seat.

“I know that, but the world at large does not. Remember what I said about airtight.”

“Sophie’s Devereaux’s aliases are always airtight,” both Nate and Hardison answered at the same time.

“Who are the parents?” Nate asked, pacing the floor.

“MI6. Both of them.  They’re here to escort her home.  She’s in boarding school here.”

“Did you know? That she was here, this close?”

“Would you believe me if I said I didn’t know? I didn’t even know what she looked like until I saw her the first time, which was earlier today.”

It was like a gut punch when she saw Lily in the lobby, flanked by the two agents. How or why she had gotten protection was beyond Sophie.  Auntie must still have friends in very high places.  Sophie would have moved heaven and earth if she knew that Lily was in danger.  Now she was. Her daughter was in great danger.

“Who, Sophie? Who is threatening her?”

“William’s second wife.”

They all looked at her like she was lying to them.

“Well, I wasn’t the one who married someone before I was divorced. Does that answer your question?  She was never legally his wife or Lily’s mother, although she’s tried to claim Lily as her own on several occasions.  Auntie has mostly taken care of Lily, but with her illness, it’s become a necessity for Lily to be in England.  Hence the moving of her back to England.”

“The second wife wants all the money?” Hardison asked as he tapped away at his small laptop.

“As much as she can get. She thinks she can buy the title. With all my money.”

“So, she threatens to have Lily kidnapped. She tells you to pay up or else.  Why the other agencies’ presence?”

“Her boyfriend is, shall we say, too well connected to certain interests in the Middle East.”

“Her boyfriend’s a terrorist?” Hardison said, looking up from whatever he was doing.

“Probably just funds them,” Eliot finished the thought.

“Exactly. My money funds respect with the peers. He goes off and keeps funding whatever terrorist cell is in his back pocket.”

“Shit. Soph, you should have come to us,” Nate told her as he moved closer.

“And have them kill her or worse. Because there is worse.  My family, they don’t know. Anything.”

Sophie wasn’t going to cry. All her cons, all her aliases, most of her family didn’t know anything. They probably thought she was dead.

“So, we have to stop a kidnapping, a terrorist cell, blackmail and get a girl home to her grandmother before she dies.”

Nate basically summed it up in one sentence.

“Does she know you’re alive?” Eliot asked the hardest question.

“I have no idea.  I was so ill after giving birth.  It took almost six months before I could function. By the time I could, there wasn’t much I could do. I put it behind me and moved forward.”

“When my mom died, I felt it. Right here,” Parker said, pointing to her chest.

The room fell silent, all of them looking at Parker.

“I don’t even remember what she looked like, but I just remember that feeling, like something, was ripped from me. Maybe she remembers you, knows you.”

It was like someone punched Sophie in the gut. She couldn’t breathe right then, focusing on trying to draw breath into her lungs. Hardison reached out to touch Parker but dropped his hand at the last minute, not sure if he should comfort her or not.  Eliot looked down at the ground, breathing in and out quickly to attempt to not get upset. Nate’s eyes were already rimmed red from being upset. He just turned away and shook his head. 


	9. Eliot Hates Drama

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eliot and team drama.

Chapter Nine—Eliot Hates Drama

This was a clusterfuck if there ever was one, Eliot thought.  Sophie goes off the rails because someone was blackmailing her.  It ended up it’s the stepmother of her daughter. Only the stepmother wasn’t even her stepmother and the daughter had no idea what’s going on or even who her mother actually was.  Soap operas don’t have this complicated a plot, even the Spanish ones and those can be damn complicated. Who writes shit like this? Then Parker had to go and tell them that story? 

Eliot knew his mother and father. His mother was a force to be reckoned with.  His father wasn’t much of a father, a drunk who often berated his mother.  Only after his mother became ill, did his father soften.  Eliot never forgave how his father had treated his mother or even him. Leaving home at that early age was tough for a teenager, but it was all Eliot could do to keep his sanity, only to lose it in whatever backwater country trying to defend his own country.  And here he thought that his biological family was messed up?

The next time he saw Hardison’s nana, he was going to give her a kiss on the mouth.  He was the only sane one of the bunch. 

He’d have to figure out a way to guard the girl without the two agents knowing.  They might even be off the clock, but who knew?  Would someone come to their defense if the bad guys came after the girl?  Those other agents were probably concerned about one thing and one thing only:  catching the boyfriend, who Eliot recognized immediately from his picture, on America soil.

Nate had to have a plan by now. He could see the wheels turning in the man’s brain, even if that brain was now addled by Sophie’s confession and the lack of alcohol. If there ever was a time that Nate needed a drink, then this was one. Hell, Eliot wouldn’t mind a beer or two or three if just to dull all the pain floating around the room.  While Sophie sat on the sofa curled up, Parker paced back and forth, turning here, turning there.  No one had to gall to tell her to sit down. Hardison was tapping away at the keyboard, grumbling under his breath, fingers hitting keys much harder than he usually did.  Nate drummed his fingers against the table where he was sitting, annoying the hell out of Eliot.  He often did that when he was thinking.  Usually, Eliot could get up and leave the room or even the building. Now he was trapped with all of them.  And he was starving.

“Since I’m the only one who can actually leave the room, I’m gonna go pick up some food.”

“Orange soda.”

“Alcohol.”

“Cereal.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Ok, tea then.” Geez, he worked with a bunch of overgrown children. If he didn’t cook for them, they’d all be malnourished, drunken, sugared up, addicted, … he couldn’t finish it because they all were probably that except for malnourished. He made them damn fine meals. That’s why they all could function for the most part.

“Keep it down. Don’t come out. Keep your comms in at all times. Got it, Soph?”

Sophie just saluted him instead of actually answering. It took him a few minutes to find the market.  Nate was lucky that there was a liquor store right across the parking lot. Eliot groaned sometimes that he enabled Nate, but knew now was not the time to berate Nate on his drinking.  Nate was more of a bastard sober than he was drunk.  One day, hopefully, sooner than later, Nate would realize that drinking would not solve his issues. 

The snow was starting to pile up on the roads. That’s what he was afraid of.  If it got to be too deep, no one was going anywhere.  But they needed to plan so that no one got hurt. He wasn’t going to go into this without a good plan and backups if needed. This was a child. This was his teammate’s daughter.  Even if she didn’t know that daughter.

What a messed-up situation.  To have a child, not be able to be a parent to that child because of someone’s false impression of you as a person. This William person must have been the biggest dick in the world.  He attempted to kill Sophie and their child because of her con.  He could have just divorced her. Saving face was more important. So, a child was without its mother, a mother never got to know her child and the father was six feet under because of his addiction.  Now the child was in danger because of money and a title.

Two of his best friends would probably never speak to each other after this was over. He had no idea how to fix that or even if it could be fixed. Even if he and Aimee had broken up and had a child, he never would have treated her poorly or the child.  He would just have to make sure Nate didn’t drink himself into a stupor. Not only was Nate dealing with Sophie’s supposed betrayal for not telling him she was married before and had a kid, all his demons were roaring to the forefront.  Sam would have been the same age as Lily.

Grabbing what he could for an easy meal, Eliot quickly made his way back through the snow as fast as he could on foot.  The roads were almost deserted as he did.  There had to be eyes on him now.  He just stuck out too prominently. Keeping his head turned down just in case, he made it almost to the door before seeing her.  She was tall for her age, dark, curly hair tumbling out of the hat she was wearing.  They must have been to dinner. The two adults were almost plastered to each side of her. Eliot couldn’t really tell her eye color from that distance, but he bet they’d be the same color as Sophie’s.  Just from this distance, he could tell that she was definitely her mother’s daughter.  Damn, that had to be how Nate figured it out so quickly. She’d been in the lobby when Nate checked in. Recognition would have been almost immediate.  Once Nate put two and two together, he just had to wait until Sophie gave up the ghost. 

Eliot followed at a distance until the three made it back into the main part of the inn.  Then he followed them until they were back in their room. Surely, they had to know they were in danger.  Maybe they didn’t. 

As Eliot was walking back to the other part of the inn, it hit him, what they were doing.  Were they using her as bait?  Please let them not be using her as bait to catch that son of a bitch.  She’s thirteen.  Would they be that brazen? He hoped not.  She could get hurt or worse. He’d have to run it by Nate, without Sophie hearing.


	10. Does Nate Live for the Drama?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nate really needs to have a talk with Sophie.

Chapter Ten—Does Nate Live for the Drama?

Nate could tell that Eliot wanted to speak with him when he came back.  And he didn’t want Sophie to hear what he had to say.  Taking his earpiece out, he wandered over to Eliot, who was placing the bags of food on the small countertop.  The kitchen was tiny, but it would do for the night.  They wouldn’t starve.

“Spotted the girl.  They’re in a room in the main part of the inn.  Those agents are jumpy, but not jumpy enough for my tastes,” Eliot mumbled to Nate.

“That’s what I was afraid of.”

“You saw them, in the lobby?”

“Yeah.  Two young agents and a grandmother aren’t going to be enough if they decide to take her.”

“Good luck getting the other agencies to step in. They’re not gonna give a fuck.”

That’s what Nate was fearing.

“God, she looks exactly like Sophie.”

Nate closed his eyes, reliving seeing her in that lobby. The way her eyes sparkled in the light, the brown deep like Sophie’s. Her hair was the same rich brown, curling a bit more, but Sophie’s did that when she didn’t style it.  She even had a few expressions that her mother did.  It amazed Nate how much genetics played a role in how one expressed themselves.  It must have gutted Sophie to see her like that, knowing that her own daughter stood mere feet from her, not knowing her because of a bastard father and a system that Sophie had no idea how to fight.

Sam had looked like Maggie from birth, except for the hair. He definitely had his father’s wild curls.  Then he changed at around six or so.  His eyes started to match his father’s, his expressions mirroring Nate’s own most of the time. He even had Nate’s smirk down pat, although it looked much more innocent and adorable on a six-year-old boy than it did on a grown man. They sheared those curls off when he went into the hospital so that his hair could be more easily cleaned.  As Nate would remember it, Sam was the best of the both of them, hands down.

What would Lily be like? Would she be overdramatic like her mother, like fashion, be a princess? Because her mother was a princess in her own mind.  Sophie was also one of the most intelligent and stubborn women that he had ever known.  The way her mind worked fascinated him to the point of obsession sometimes.  Would Lily be able to think on her feet, charm half the world into believing what she said?  Would accents, knowledge just stick in her brain like glue to be pulled out at a moment’s notice when needed?  Nate was always amazed that once Sophie learned a new accent or a fact, that it was there to stay.  It had saved their asses on many occasions during a job.  It had probably saved her earlier in her career.

Sophie always tried to hide it, but her empathy was always her downfall.  Not that Nate thought it was a bad trait to have.  He most certainly did not use it, nor did he want to on most occasions.  That’s why he had Sophie. She could charm anyone, but what he needed was someone who could see into the victim or mark’s hearts, see what they wanted the most.  Nate often forgot that piece, which was probably why he failed when Sophie wasn’t involved.  She kept him sane, grounded, was his compass. Now he just didn’t know anymore. She’d played him, lied to him, but that was her job, right?

She wouldn’t look at him, choosing to curl up into a ball on the sofa instead.  Parker had gone and retrieved her belongings.  Nate needed them all in the same place, to keep track of them just in case this went south.  He wouldn’t be responsible if one of them went off on their own.  Keeping them safe from the agencies was the first problem.  Maybe they didn’t know the team was there? 

“Hardison, is there any way you can tell if they know about us? Being here?” Nate asked the younger man as he typed away at his small laptop.

“They keep that stuff buried deep, but I’m not picking up any chatter about any of us.  You’d think I would have picked up something about Eliot at least.  Nothing.  There is an alert on the terrorist boyfriend though, which is curious.  He apparently is a very bad boy and is wanted in multiple jurisdictions.  I’m not sure how he’s been kept out of lockup.”

“What about the girl? What do we know?”

Sophie perked up a bit but still wouldn’t look anywhere near him.

“Not much. Sheltered life.  They only sent her to boarding school a few years ago.  Apparently likes the power ballads if her iTunes is to be believed.  Good grades, but not perfect.  Participates in drama, chess club.”

Nate could see Sophie grimace at that one.

“Dressed up as Doctor Who last Halloween.  Everyone calls her Brit, but that’s probably because she’s one of a handful of British citizens at the school.  She’s a typical kid, Nate.”

He could see Sophie’s little smile.  Nate wondered if Sophie knew any of this, or had she even looked for her daughter.

“Who has two agents guarding her and someone who wants to kidnap her because of who she is,” Eliot added.  “They’re gonna make a move, very soon.  Once they get off American soil, there’s no way they’ll have this kind of access.”

“Once I pay the money, it won’t matter,” Sophie piped up.

“This isn’t just about the money, Sophie. They want something from you.”

There had to be something more than just the money.

“My professional advice?  Nate’s right.  There is something more to this.  Your blackmailer has done his research.  My best guess is they want you to do something for them, which probably means pulling a job. Or they want information from you. They’ll bleed you dry if you let them.”

Eliot’s mind was working in sync with Nate’s. Why lure Sophie to this town, at this time? It would have been better to deal with all of this electronically.  They wanted Sophie to make contact with her daughter, just to show her that they meant business.

“It doesn’t matter. I’ll do whatever they want.”

“Which is exactly how they want you to react,” Nate warned her.

“You would do the same thing,” Sophie shot back, knowing that it would hurt him.

“I would if I could.”

So, the hurts would dig deep on this job, a job that none of them wanted.

“I have a headache,” Sophie announced, grabbing her purse.

She quietly shut the bedroom door.  All of them stood around, not knowing what to do.

“Nate, you need to talk to her.  Whatever happens, she’ll sacrifice herself no matter what goes down.  I can’t protect all of you if she does that.”

“I know. I know.”

He just needed to think of a plan once the real cards were revealed.  What would be their target though, the job?  Would it entail stealing something?  Getting information?  Nate could speculate all he liked, but until he had more information, there would be no way to pinpoint what they wanted exactly.  The money was on the table, a lot of money.

Before anyone could say anything more, Nate decided that the best way to figure out what they might want would be to ask the only person he could: Sophie. This was not going to be pleasant. He’d have to delve deep, ask her uncomfortable questions to make sure all the bases were covered.

“Whatever you do…,” Nate started.

“We know.  Maybe you need a safe word or something,” Hardison quipped.

“Or a suit of armor,” Parker finished his thought.

A look passed between Nate and Eliot like he knew that Nate had to do this and sympathized with him.  Eliot was close to Sophie, knew how her emotions worked.  Only Nate was closer, and sometimes he wondered why.  He certainly didn’t always understand her and wanted to strangle her on plenty of occasions.  He did know that he trusted her now, in more ways than one. This one had thrown him for a loop.

“Learn to duck,” Eliot said as Nate opened the door to the bedroom.

Would it be her words that she’d throw back at him?  Or any of the breakables in the room?


	11. Nate and Sophie Finally Talk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nate and Sophie finally have it out. Does he listen? Will she tell him the truth?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really dislike naming chapters.

Chapter Eleven—Nate and Sophie Finally Talk

Sophie really, really did not want to speak to Nate. She just wanted to surround herself with calmness, not his insistence that they talk this out, i.e, listen to him plan a way out of this. She had to be prepared to do whatever it was they wanted of her.  She had realized early on it probably wasn’t just about the money.  They could have come to her ages ago, blackmailed her and it would have been done.  When she was alone, it would have been so much simpler.  She wasn’t alone now, her team standing by her side, although they didn’t understand what she was going through.

She hadn’t meant to hurt Nate with her words, but what else did she have? Would he badger her until she told him everything, how she conned William to get to his millions in addition to garnering a way into his world?  She had gained knowledge, cash, paintings, everything she had ever wanted while being involved with William. She had also endured plenty of pain and suffering, including almost dying at the man’s hands.  She had promised herself that she would never be involved with a man again, particularly a man with control issues. Now here she was, in love with a man who had control issues on top of a lot more.

“I’m sorry.” What had he just said? That he was sorry?  “This isn’t, I’m not good at words.  Just, we need more information. If we’re going to save her.”

“I’m going to save her. I’m her mother.”

Nate had to realize that this one was totally on her.

“You need help. Just like I needed help all those years ago. I didn’t get any. I know…”

“Yes, you know what it’s like to lose a child. I will not lose her, again. She’s alive and well and I intend to keep it that way.”

Sophie hadn’t wanted to hurt Nate, but if that was the only way she knew to keep him out of this, not involved, then she’d do it.

Instead of backing away from her, letting her do what she wanted, which was what he would have done a few years ago, he sat down beside her on the bed.

“Sam used to tell, he’d tell me I had to be nicer. Even he noticed that I could be an asshole at times. Out of the mouths of babes.  I kept thinking that he’d get better, be able to sass me, grow up to be a better version of me.  Only he was his own person.  Got the best of both of us, although it was more Maggie than me. He made me a better person. Whatever this is…”

“I know what this is, Nate.  She wants to prove that I’m not worthy. In the end, whatever they have planned, I will go down for it. They’ll get away with whatever they’re after.  She’ll best me like she always has.”

She hadn’t told Nate the whole story, on purpose. That would give him everything, every single piece of information about her, her life before, her family, everything. Not only did she have her own daughter to think about, but she also had her family as well. What was left of her family, she thought.

Nate stared at her, willing her to reveal the latest bombshell that she had neglected to tell them all.

“Sophie, tell me.”

“You know how they say that family is the ones that know you best?  Why is it that she could claim Lily as her own?”

“Because the would-be kidnapper had to have been someone that was close to you. She knows you, intimately.”

“Bingo. You win the prize, Nate Ford.”

“Sophie, we all have family that we can’t stand. Look at me.”

“She betrayed me, Nate.  How do you think William found out? He wasn’t the smartest man in the world, but his head turned constantly at beautiful women.”

“She seduced him?”

“While I was pregnant with Lily. How is that for getting in too deep.”

“Who?” Nate asked as he took her hand in his.

“You think your father was a piece of work?  My sister tops that in spades. Her shtick was seduction, of some of the world’s most prestigious men. Pull them in, seduce them, get them to divorce their wives, then go in for the kill, sometimes literally.  William was just a plaything, to embarrass me.  She had stayed away from me, thinking that my cons were beneath her station in life.  A few digs here and there, telling me I was worthless, a common thief. I’ve never been common at anything.”

Nate’s chuckle lent credence to what she was saying.  “Common would never be a word I would use. You’re definitely not worthless.”

“From when I was young, she was prettier, got better grades, got all the boys. I shrank in her presence.  Getting away from her was always the ultimate goal. When I made a name for myself, she was furious at first.  Then the putdowns, the snide remarks, all from afar because god forbid that she would actually acknowledge my existence.  She didn’t want people to know where we came from.  The deeper I went into conning people, the more remarks she made. I disappeared for years off her radar. You think that you were good at tracking me? She probably had someone fulltime on me. I had to be better than her because if I wasn’t, she would have stomped on me like a bug.  That’s why I never stayed very long.  The long con was not my specialty, until William. I thought I could stay a while, convince him that I wanted to be with him, and use the alias as needed.  Only she found out, a few years in.  She was married to some sheik or something. The calls started happening. I’d pay her off to keep quiet. For a while, that worked. Then I just got tired of it all.”

“So, she came after you?”

“Her sheik did not last, so she came after me instead.  To lure William away from me. It didn’t take much. He had a wandering eye. I knew that or figured it out later.  Too late.  Love will blind you too much.”

Sophie could feel Nate’s body tense up at the word love. She knew he had a difficult time expressing his emotions, how he actually felt about her.  She had figured out much earlier that his declaration of needing her was almost or sometimes even better than telling her that he loved her.  No one had ever needed her that way or with that intensity. 

“She came after William. I was collateral damage.  So was Lily.  William was incensed to find out about me. I tried to tell him, that I loved him, but she had him wrapped around her finger so quickly.”

Sophie hadn’t wanted to tell Nate the whole story.  The fact that he now knew that she loved William, who was a rake and a horrible person, what did that say about her?  That she was drawn to bad guys? 

“It’s not your fault.”

“Not my fault?  I was conning him, had been conning him for years.  I knew what he was. He was not a very nice man.  I just, I thought…”

“That you could change him.”

Now they were delving into dangerous territory.  She did not want to change Nate. She wanted Nate to figure out his worth, that he wasn’t a bad man. He was complicated, yes, but was never a bad man.  How would have someone so wonderful as Maggie ever fall for him if he was that bad?  She’d have to ask Maggie sometime her reasons for being attracted to Nate.  It would be a fascinating conversation.

“I don’t want to change you.”

“But you should.  Want me to change.  I have changed for you. For myself.  For the team.  Once we figure all this out, figure out who has it out for us. I know, there are some things that I need to work on.”

“It’s human nature to want what’s best for the ones we love.”

Nate squeezed her hand tighter.

“You know, I feel like we’re having two different conversations here.”

“You keep thinking that, Nate.”

“Let’s go steal a princess.”

“She’s not a princess.”

“She is if she’s your daughter.”

“Oh, bloody hell, Nate, I’m not a princess.”

Sophie could see Nate’s sarcastic smirk appearing on his face.

“You know, if we don’t argue and throw a few things, they’re gonna want to know what happened in here.”

And that’s her Nate, changing the subject from feelings to anything else that might roll through that mind of his.

“We don’t always argue.”

“Well, yeah, pretty much we do.”

Sophie could have started an argument, could have refuted what he was saying. It was the truth, but that’s the way they had been operating since San Lorenzo, probably even before that. Once they became actual peers, because he certainly did not run this crew as he did before, the arguments were more pointed, more geared towards the way they reacted to each other, not what was going on with the team.

“So, you want an argument, because the way I’m looking at it right now, you are moving towards that…”

Nate didn’t let her finish her sentence, probably because she was getting worked up again, her calm damaged by his insistence that they always argued.  Instead, he grabbed her and pulled her into an embrace, lips crashing into hers.

“Let’s not argue,” he told her once he let her up for air.

“There are better things to do.”

Before Nate could show her what better things she was talking about, her phone rang.

“Hello.  Yes?”

Dammit, why now? A storm was raging outside, they’d be snowed in for at least a day. Nate was not going to like this. Once she put her phone down and told him what was asked of her, he definitely was not going to like this.

“She wants to meet.”

“Why?”

“Hand over all that I have.  She wants to gloat.”

Nate snapped his fingers like he was going on all cylinders now. 

“That’s it.”

“What’s it?”

“I know what she wants.”

“Good. Because I haven’t a clue.”


	12. Eliot Has It All Figured Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eliot figures out a few things.

Chapter Twelve—Eliot Has It All Figured Out

Eliot knew exactly how this was going to go down.  He thought that Nate probably had some clues also, but until the mastermind came to him and asked him the questions he needed answers to, he’d keep quiet, for the time being. 

The snow outside was in stark contrast to the last time he met Omar Khan. It was hot, muggy, sandy, and miserable.  He hated meeting up with Damien’s clients anywhere he couldn’t easily defend his boss. Omar knew this and used it to his advantage.  Not that Eliot failed his mission.  Damien Moreau was pleased when Eliot came back to him mission accomplished.  Omar had been embarrassed when Eliot had shown him the error of his ways.  Moreau’s reach was wide and deadly. Omar was lucky he got away with a proverbial spanking.  The next time Eliot would go after him would cost him his life.  Omar stayed off his radar after that. Once Eliot was no longer in Moreau’s employ, he’d forgotten about the wannabe terrorist because that’s the way Eliot always saw him.

Now that he had the means to fund his initiative, Eliot figured he wanted revenge.  He always was a lady’s man, going after anything on two legs that had money. Now that he had attached himself to royalty, or what he thought was royalty, more doors might be opened for him.  Little did he know was the fact that his reputation did follow him around.  MI6 and Scotland Yard weren’t just going to let him insert himself into society.  Just because he had attached himself to Lily’s stepmother, that didn’t mean he was exonerated from his actions across the world.

The door to the bedroom slammed open, Nate rushing out as he snapped his fingers for Hardison to wake up. Hardison was sprawled out on the sofa, eyes closed.

“Eliot? Omar Khan?”

Didn’t take him long to figure out Eliot would probably know the man.

“Funds terrorists around the world while attempting to keep his reputation out of it.”

Hardison was tapping on the keyboard faster than Eliot was thinking. What should he tell Nate?

“Omar Khan.  Intelligence says that he is funding not one, but two terror cells in the Middle East.  Seems though that he’s lost some favor with these so-called cells. They don’t like his lifestyle choices.”

“He’s going after some of the pie,” Nate said as he looked over Hardison’s shoulder.

“Moreau’s network. It’s in shambles. What does he think he can scoop up and revive?”

Eliot’s mind whirled on what Khan might want to get his hands on.

“If he can’t fund them, he can certainly sell them weapons.”

Eliot groaned out loud, knowing what the man was now after.  He had no idea about the operations to date, although he did know where some of Moreau’s stashes might be held. There was no way Moreau still had them in the same place.

“Take Lily and draw out the only person who might know where that stash is.”

Shit, Eliot thought.  Khan was a fucking idiot.  Just because he was the only one left from Moreau’s team did not mean he knew where the stash was.  He had some ideas though. Moreau always worked through intimidation.  People knew to never mess with Damien, so his merchandise was safe. Now that Damien was gone, then it was a free for all.  The terrorists would buy from anyone. They didn’t care what lifestyle the seller had.

“So not only would he have my money, he would have the only living being who knew Damien Moreau’s habits and hiding places. Kill two birds with one stone,” Sophie interjected.

“Fuck,” Eliot replied.

“Well we walked right into that one,” Parker added.

“Yeah, well, so did the CIA, NSA, and MI6. Only they don’t give a good goddamn if we all get slaughtered in the process. We are truly fucked unless we figure out a way around these goons.”

Hardison was right.  Khan was a goon, sometimes smarter than the average goon, but a goon nonetheless.  Eliot had four of the smartest people on his side. Only he did not want to expose them to Khan.  Khan had no qualms about killing people that got in his way.

“Eliot, you know Khan best,” Nate said as he turned toward Eliot.

“We’re stuck here, no backup, a few agents who really do not care what happens to us and Khan probably has more firepower than what Sophie has in her purse.”

Sophie frowned at him, that knowing look on her face.  Eliot didn’t like guns, but Sophie surely did not come into this unarmed.

“One weapon.  One hacker, one grifter, one thief, and the target.”

“Let’s go steal a hitter and a princess? Sounds like the start of a kid’s book?”

Parker was joking, if just a little, her mind going places that Eliot could never figure out.

“You go ahead and write that out, Parker.  I have a line on where our illustrious would be terrorist is staying.”  Hardison, as always, working his magic.  “There are three buildings associated with this inn.  We are in one of them.  The alphabet is in the main part.  They’re in the other one.”

Too close for comfort for Eliot. They could go and attempt to take Lily at any point in time and the locals wouldn’t have time to react.

“Which means we need to get her out of there asap.”

Nate was right. The sooner Lily was out of danger, the better.

“They think that Sophie is in the next room. They also know exactly where Lily is. We kidnap her first.”

Sophie did not look pleased that Nate wanted to kidnap Lily.


	13. We Are Not Knocking Out a Thirteen-Year-Old Girl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kidnapping Lily before someone else kidnaps her. Whatever could go wrong?

Chapter Thirteen—We Are Not Knocking Out a Thirteen-Year-Old Girl

Nate wanted to actually kidnap her daughter?  Oh, holy hell, that was not the way to handle this.  What if she got hurt?  Sophie would not be responsible for getting her daughter hurt.  Her sister meant business.  There had to be a better way.

“We don’t kidnap her, Nate. We get her to come with us, voluntarily.”

“Soph, I don’t think she’s going to do that. What does she know about you?”

Sophie had no idea what details had been fed to her by her sister or Auntie.  William’s influence luckily was long gone. If he had lived, then Lily probably would hate her own mother.  Had her sister been that cruel also?

“As far as I know, nothing. I’m sure, knowing my family as well as I do, that there are several rumors on my whereabouts and what I’m doing.  Lily must be a smart girl.”

“She’s half you,” Parker pointed out.

“But she doesn’t know you, Soph.”

Nate was right and wrong at the same time.  Her daughter would immediately know who she was, considering that she looked exactly like Sophie did when she was young.

“So, it’s better to scare her half to death by taking her against her will?  Why don’t we find out first?”

“Kid’s gotta have a sense that something isn’t right. The less noise we make when we do this, the better.  Sophie already has a disguise as do you, Nate.  As of right now, I can’t show my face. If I’m the target, and it’s looking more and more like I am, they know I’m here. If there wasn’t a freakin’ snowstorm, I’d say we get out of town pronto. That ain’t happening until tomorrow at the earliest.”

“Hardison, we need alternatives than staying here.  I’m sure they’ve made Eliot already.”

“Working on it,” Hardison replied as he typed furiously.

“Gear up, people. Soph and I will go retrieve the girl.”

“Nate.  A word,” Sophie said as she grabbed her clothing she wore posing as the help for the inn.

She didn’t stop undressing to talk to him.  If this was going to work, and she was doubtful that it would, she had to be ready one way or another.

“Nate, this is my daughter, whom I’ve never met.”

“I understand that you’re worried.”

“Worried?  Someone wants to take her away, possibly hurt her.  Her own flesh and blood probably. How am I going to explain this to her?  My sister has been her only family except for Auntie.  She’s going to have questions and want answers, not lies.”

“Soph, until we get her out of danger, take their leverage from them, those are going to have to wait.  We have men with guns on both sides. Do you want her in the crossfire? Because unfortunately, in every single scenario I can think of, that’s what is going to happen.  Khan is going to stop at nothing to find those guns.”

Sophie sighed in resignation. She did not want her daughter to get hurt.  She also didn’t want her scared and helpless.  Sophie knew what that felt like as a young girl, to know she couldn’t fight back, she didn’t have a voice in the world.  Lily was going to feel the same way.

“We go out there, we are going to have a united front.  Got it?”

Did Nate think they were going to bicker over how to save her daughter? Did he think that little of her?  She must have made a face because she could see Nate pull back a little.

“Sophie, I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure that girl is unharmed. Same goes for you.”

“Nate, you cannot guarantee…”

“No, but I can do my damnedest to make sure a young girl is not used as a pawn in some far-off war. Once we take care of that, we’ll figure out the rest.”

If figuring out the rest meant that she might actually have contact with her only child, then it would be worth it.  Only she didn’t think that would be the way it would go down.  Her sister’s influence had been present all of Lily’s life.

“Whatever you want to do after this is over is up to you, Sophie. I’ll back you a hundred percent.  But now is not the time…”

“I am not making any sort of predictions on how she’ll handle having to see me.  I just know that it’s not going to be pleasant, to say the least. It might hinder everything. That’s why you have to convince her to come with us.”

“Me?” Nate inquired as he finished dressing in his disguise.  “Kids and I, you know, it’s just not a good combination.”

“This coming from a man who disciplines three fully grown adults when they’re literally throwing things at each other daily. I’d say you have the fatherly instinct down pat.”

“Hardison never did tell me what he did with that lamp they broke the other day.”

Sophie laughed a little.  “He doesn’t know that you know.  I’m sure there will be a replacement as soon as he finds one.”

Nate’s disguise as an old man was firmly in place.  She really wanted to snog him silly, she didn’t dare even get near him because she needed to put on her game face.

“So, what is your plan?”

Nate’s plans were usually fairly straight forward, but something always seemed to go wrong. He usually had another plan in place for that also, but this time, she hoped that nothing went wrong.  Too many people could get hurt, including them.

“We get Hardison to distract her guards while we go in and get her.  Simple as that.”

Yes, as these things always worked out as simply as that. Not.  Nate flung the door open again, pointing to Hardison as he did.

“Place to stay?”

“There’s a hotel a few blocks over that has rooms.  I set up two adjoining under Tom Baker.  We were lucky because most of the rooms are booked.”

“Eliot, you’re wheelman.  Parker, you’re the lookout.  Hardison, you’re with us.  We need a distraction.”

“Nate, if this goes south?” Eliot asked.

“They know your face, Eliot. You need to stay as far away for your own safety and everyone else’s.”

Eliot looked a bit perturbed that Nate didn’t want him in on this one.  He’d have to deal, Sophie thought, although it certainly would have been nice to have the hitter there as backup. Parker would have to do.

“Window it is,” Parker said as she carried what little bags and the food they all had in the room.

“Hey, watch the snow. My laptop.”

Parker rolled her eyes at Hardison.  “Oh, whoops,” Parker joked as she opened the window, letting the very cold seep in.

“That is not funny.”

“Come on,” Eliot grumpily urged Parker.

“Hardison, go out the window too. I need you to distract Grandma agent.”

“Oh, yay.  I need to distract an old lady with a gun. Why can’t y’all do that sometimes?  She might shoot me.”

“I’m gonna shoot you if you don’t stop complaining.”

“Oh, yeah. That comes from Mr. I Don’t Like Guns. Make up your damn mind.”

When they all grumped at each other, that meant they were all ready and able to do their jobs. It’s when they were way too serious that always worried Sophie. 

“Soph, don’t worry. We can always use chloroform or something to knock her out.”

Just what Sophie wanted. Her daughter didn’t need to hate her from the get-go. She’d take a hard pass to Parker’s plan.

“We are not knocking out a 13-year-old girl.”


	14. Kidnapping a Thirteen-Year-Old Girl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They don't really kidnap Lily, but urge her to come with them. Chaos ensues.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't realize how long this chapter really was. Lots happens. We get to find out some of the truth of what's behind all of this nonsense that's happening.

Chapter Fourteen—Kidnapping a Thirteen-Year-Old Girl

“Tell me why we aren’t knocking out a 13-year-old girl?”

Nate was asking the right question. Lily was being downright obnoxious. He wished she would just put down the chair and see their way of thinking.

“Lily,” Nate started.

“How do you know my name? Where are my bodyguards?”

Bodyguards? That’s who they told her they were?  Well, maybe they were there to guard her, but that was just secondary to catching Khan and his goons.

“We will keep you safe. I promise.”

“Seriously?”

Nate rolled his eyes again. Teenagers.  Lily even looked like her mother when she was angry.  Nate hadn’t wanted Sophie to reveal who she was but instead went with the explanation scenario.  The girl was not biting at all. 

“Your so-called bodyguards are looking for Omar Khan. He’s a bad guy.”

“Omar? Wait, what? Why would he be involved with bad guys?”

“Because what do you think he does daily?”

Sophie finally spoke up but kept her foreign accent to disguise who she really was. Nate had dropped his older man, strange accent when he entered Lily’s room just to make sure the girl did not scream. Lily did not scream, she wielded a chair in front of her in self-defense.

“Well, perhaps you are correct. I never did like the bastard.”

“Language,” both Nate and Sophie almost shouted, but luckily kept their voices down.

“It’s true.  All he could think about was Gram’s money.”

So, he not only wanted all of Sophie’s money, he wanted her grandmother’s money too.  He could do a lot to rebuild Moreau’s empire with that kind of capital.

“Which he is going to use for nefarious purposes.”

“Nefarious? He was buying sandwich shop franchises. He’s bought three in the last month.”

“Money laundering,” Sophie spoke out of the side of her mouth so that only Nate could hear her.

“Could be.”

All Nate could hear in the comms was Hardison and his babbling.  At least on the jobs where Hardison had to babble, he did it with expertise.  He could go on and on about most subjects, annoying the hell out of whoever was supposed to listen.  The irritation level was rising rapidly for the three agents in the lobby. They needed to work fast.

“Grab your things,” Sophie ordered, making Lily straighten up her spine even further.

“Why on earth would I do anything you’ve asked?”

“Because if you don’t, Omar Khan is going to have you kidnapped and possibly hurt because he wants to fund several terrorist cells in addition to becoming one of the largest illegal gun runners in the world. Is that a good enough excuse for you?”

He really wished that Sophie hadn’t been so bold with the story she was telling the girl.

“I’m not sure that’s a good excuse to run off with two strangers.”

Nate wished that Sophie had not just done what she did.  Lily’s eyes widened as Sophie pulled off her wig and glasses. She straightened her spine, shaking out her hair that had been tucked underneath the greying wig.

“She told me that you were dead,” Lily admitted, tears starting to form.

“To her, I was.”

“I don’t understand. This isn’t real.”

Having a 13-year-old hysterical girl was not what Nate had wanted, but he had anticipated that it might happen.

“Lily, we’re just here to help you. Those men, they can’t protect you.”

Nate hoped that they could protect her though. The element of surprise would help if they could just get her out without no one knowing.

“But Gram. What about her?”

“Your grandmother is very ill.  Would you like to see her?”

Sophie had almost frozen in place, looking her only daughter over like she was attempting to memorize her features.

“So, who are you? Why you?” Lily pointed to Nate.

“He’s my…”

“See, we work together but we…”

“So, you and your boyfriend want to take me out of here?”

Damn perceptive kid.

Parker poked her head in the window and gestured to him.

“We got company.  In the parking lot.”

“Shit. Hardison, get the hell out of there. Now.  We are going through that window whether you like it or not.”

“But my mum told me to stay put, that they’ll protect me.”

Nate saw Sophie swallow hard.  Her sister had even usurped that role, having Lily call her mum. 

“Do we need the you know what?” Parker asked, knowing that Nate would get clued in by her hand gestures of holding a cloth over her mouth.

“No, Parker.  Dammit, we have to go.”

Before the girl could move, Nate heard a gunshot.  Lily startled, looking around at the three people in the room urging her to take a leap of faith and go with them.

“Let’s go,” Lily said as she grabbed her backpack.

“No phone,” Nate urged the girl, making her hand over her cell phone to him. “They might be able to track it.”

As Parker helped Lily out the window, Nate barred the door with a couple of chairs and the dresser. He then took Lily’s phone and smashed it with his boot, rendering it unusable.  Climbing out last, he jumped to the ground and ran to the van. He hoped that they couldn’t be traced because driving too much in the mess that the snow had created would put them at a distinct disadvantage.

“Sophie, phone,” Hardison called out as they got into the van.

It didn’t take the man long to make it non-traceable.

“Is my mum here? Is she safe? She said she was going to meet up with me here. Please just tell me what’s happening.”

“Nate, she doesn’t know,” Sophie whispered into her comm.

“But she knows who you are.”

“Does she?”

They’d table the identifications until they were safe.  Nate could hear off in the distance what sounded like a police car.

“Nate, those cops are walking into an ambush,” Eliot said as he steered the van through the deep snow.

“No. Got it. Told dispatch about the guns so they don’t walk into something they can’t handle. Hopefully, those other agencies will show themselves now, giving us the opportunity to get the hell out of dodge.”

“Hardison, we need somewhere else to stay. The other place is way too close to this one. Eliot, can we make it back to the interstate?”

“It’s going to be slow going, but yeah.”

“Hardison, pick something non-descript.”

It took them over an hour when it should have taken a mere fifteen minutes to make it back to the interstate.  Eliot pulled into the parking lot, finding a spot out of the way in the back.

“Can you hack their security feed?”

“Of course, I can hack their security feed.  Don’t you know who I am.”

Lily looked at Hardison in awe as he typed away at his keyboard, bringing up the feeds.

“I’ll spoof them so they don’t know exactly who is staying in the rooms. Got two together, ground floor just in case, in the back.”

It took Parker and Hardison ten minutes to secure the rooms and another ten before they could actually go through the back door. It was quiet in the hallway to the rooms, which were connecting.  Lily hadn’t said two words to Sophie in that time but kept glancing over her way when Sophie wasn’t aware, or when Lily thought Sophie wasn’t aware. She was aware of each little tic, each movement of the girl’s body.  Nate had wanted to pull her aside before going into that room, to have a private conversation before she talked to Lily, only it never happened.

Once they all piled into the first room, Nate could tell that Sophie was distressed, going over to the window to close the curtains to the outside world.

“So, Mr. and Mrs. Simpson have been at this location for two nights. The front desk had no idea that we hadn’t checked in yet.  They thought we lost our key card.  And we’re here with our adorable children Biff and Tiffany, hence the two rooms. Which means no one goes out of here unless they are careful. Got it?”

Each one of them nodded to Hardison, knowing the standard procedure when they were staying clandestinely at a hotel.

“Why are you lying?” Lily wanted to know.

“We’re hiding.  Men, with guns,” Parker pointed out as she poked around the room.

Nate was too busy attempting to figure out if Sophie was going to lose it and didn’t see that Lily had inched her way out of the room into the other one.  As luck would have it, Parker had seen exactly what the girl was up to and followed her closely.  Commotion in the other room had them all getting up and seeing what the trouble was.  Parker had a weapon in her hand, holding it up by the pistol grip.

“Where on earth did you get that?” Sophie cried.

“Well, um,” Lily started.

Oh god, she’s thirteen and has already learned how to lift a weapon? Was this Sophie’s existence when she was young?

“My mum, she gave this to me, just in case.”

“You could have hurt yourself,” Parker said as she handed the gun to Eliot, who emptied the gun of its bullets. 

“Your mum was wrong, Lily. You’re too young.”

“What?  Weren’t you even younger when you handled one? She told me so many tales.”

“They were tales, Lily.  Stories she made up.”

“You’re lying. Just like she said you’d lie if you had lived. And now here you are.”

It was a standoff that wasn’t going to amount to anything but hurt feelings if Nate didn’t take control of the situation.

“Sophie, other room. Parker, watch her. Search the backpack.  Hardison, I need answers.”

They all got down to their jobs, with Eliot looking out the door to make sure no one was lurking around to Hardison booting up his laptop for gathering more information, including what was going on in town.  Parker stood near the bed where Lily was now sitting, going through her meager belongings. Nate grabbed Sophie’s arm and dragged her back to the room where they’d started.

“I need a drink,” he voiced as Sophie sat down on the bed, spine straight and unyielding.

“She doesn’t know.”

“And why would your sister tell her?  It’s better to make up stories then tell the truth, isn’t it?  Is this your whole family?”

“No, no it’s not.”

Nate started to talk over her, wondering how people could treat a child this way, make up stories about her family.

“Sophie, for god’s sake, just tell me the truth.”

“Abigail. That’s my sister’s name.  We were two of a kind.  Growing up in a home that sometimes didn’t have heat or food. You learn to steal really early in life.  A lie came so easily if just to get a loaf of bread. God, we were so dirt poor. My father was a drunk, coming home smelling like a brewery every single night.  My mum, she was so overwhelmed, too many babes too close together. The sixth one nearly killed her. I’m the oldest, Abigail the next oldest. All girls except the last one.  My father was so happy to finally have a boy, even though my mother never really got better after his birth.  I was twelve when my mother passed. She looked twenty years older than she really was.  I was determined to make sure everyone had what they needed.  I was their mother, Nate.  I dressed them, fed them, stole for them.  Abigail is only a year and a half younger.  She attracted the boys from an early age, all the while I toiled to make sure there was food on the table. When I was sixteen, my mother’s family came, said I could come along if I wanted, but there would be rules to follow. I tried, I really did.  They looked at me like I had grown two heads. It was worse for Abby.  She was stunning, even at fifteen.  Turned way too many heads.  I was a late bloomer, but she most certainly was not.  She begged me to go off with her, to leave the younger ones to my mother’s side of the family. I almost, I almost said yes.  She disappeared a few months later, right when she turned sixteen. I stayed. Big mistake.  By the time I was eighteen, it was apparent that my welcome was up. The younger ones, they were safe and fed. That was all that I cared about. I picked up my things and left in the middle of the night. My brother, he was so young, just a little thing.  The other girls, so precious and innocent.  I tried to keep them from all of it.”

Nate knelt down onto the floor directly in front of Sophie and took her hand.

“Where are they now?”

“I sent them money on occasion.  It was returned for the most part.  When they all turned eighteen, I was able to give them money anonymously.  I found out from connections they were told when they were children that my money was not good. In a way, they were right.  Ill-gotten gains.  They’re all living quiet lives now, kids, jobs. Boring lives, while I have a gun that I had to take from my own daughter, given to her by her own aunt.”

“She thinks that her aunt is her mother.”

Slowly, Nate sat down on the bed beside Sophie, his knees a bit sore from the hard ground. He didn’t want to pressure her, letting her tell her story.

“I’m sure, another story that Abby made up to make her look good in everyone’s eyes.  Why couldn’t she just tell the child that her mother was dead?”

“You’re my mother?” Lily said from the doorway to the other room.

“Lily, I’m sorry.”

“Sorry? Where were you?  How could you do something like that?”

Here the poor girl was, in the middle of five people whose growth was stunted by upbringings that did not make them qualified at all to help Lily through this.

“Sophie didn’t have a choice,” Eliot said, voice low and soft.

“Is that what she calls herself?”

“It’s her name,” Parker said from behind the girl.

“You people are crazy.  Do you all lie for a living?  Because that’s what my mum said to me, that you lied for a living. What else are you not telling me?”

“We help people,” Eliot started.  “Your mother, your real mother, is a good person.”

“A good person who left her baby daughter.”

With that, Lily turned sharply and left the room, almost knocking Parker out of the way.

“She’s right. I’m not a good person. I never have been.”

What a clusterfuck, Nate thought.  They needed to get back to Boston, figure out what to do with Lily and how to get her back to her grandmother. But her grandmother couldn’t protect her until the team brought Khan down. If Khan was brought to justice, then Abigail might be implicated also.  And if Sophie was right, her Auntie, the Countess of Kensington, wasn’t long for this world.

“Well, you’re all that she’s got,” Parker got out.

“We eat.  We figure out what to do about Khan,” Eliot surmised as he pawed through the bags of food.

“And we take down your conniving sister.  Makes me glad that I don’t have any siblings.  Of course, I have all y’all. That’s enough to drive a man insane.”

Hardison was right, in a way.  They did have each other.  They would protect each other and figure out a way through this.  The rest of them stared at Nate, even to the point that Eliot raised his eyebrows, directing him to the other room.

“Just because I had a kid once does not mean I was actually good at it.”

“Come on. You have us.”

“I’m thinkin’ you’re better at this than you think.”

“You’re not old enough to be my dad,” Eliot finished the thought for the other two.

This was not going to go well.  Nate didn’t do “feelings”.  He couldn’t even figure out his own most of the time, hence the bottle that was now sitting out on the table.  Liquid courage.  That’s what he needed right at that point.  Grabbing for it, Sophie swiped it before he could close his hand around it.

“It’s either be an asshole or creepy. Which one is it?”

“He’s right, Soph. Remember when he was sober?”  Parker was right.

“Don’t be creepy around the kid, Nate,” Eliot warned as he started to figure out how to make dinner with just a microwave.

“I’m not creepy,” he complained.

“You hypnotized me.”

“You made a person’s brain bleed.”

“You make up plans where people die.”

They all had a point.

“She hates me.”

“She doesn’t know you, Sophie. And when she does, it will be better.”

Parker made a shooing gesture to Nate while Hardison kept shaking his head to make sure Nate knew that it was on him to make this better.

“Treat her like a client,” Eliot suggested as he started opening food.

“Oh, bloody hell.  I swear you are all stunted.”

“Pretty much,” Parker agreed as she poked through another bag. Eliot grabbed it out of her hands and told her to go away.  “Cereal?”

“No, Parker.  Sit down.”

Nate had never understood it exactly, but they all were quite comfortable around each other.  The only thing they didn’t do was touch each other, discounting the fact that he and Sophie were involved.  How does one talk about feelings when they were never voiced, or if they were, it was during an argument?  It wasn’t like he was ever up front with Maggie unless pushed.

“Alright.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Nate reluctantly knocked on the door of the other room gently, hoping that she’d just tell him to go away and that would be the end of it.  No response to his knocking, so he opened the door.  Looking around, he didn’t see Lily sulking on the bed.  The bathroom door was open. And so was the window. Shit.

“Dammit,” Nate called.  “We’ve got a runner.”

Eliot rushed into the room, with Parker and Sophie on his heels.  Parker was the only one still somewhat dressed to go outside. She hadn’t pulled her boots off yet.  Grabbing her jacket, she pushed the window open enough to crawl out of it the same way Lily must have. Lily had neglected to shut it all the way.  If she had, Nate would have guessed she went through the door.

Eliot quickly went back into the other room and pulled his jacket from the chair.

“She couldn’t have gotten far.  Hardison, the feeds from the security cameras.”

Hardison was already on it, having just accessed his computer.  Scrolling through each camera, he spotted her immediately near the front entrance.

“Parker, front. Now.”

Eliot was already gone by the time Hardison had found Lily.  Nate didn’t bother pulling on his coat as he strode down the hall behind Sophie.

“Parker’s got her, folks,” Hardison told the other three.  “Wait, wait. We got bogeys. Incoming. Nate, Eliot. It’s not any of the agencies. They somehow tracked us here. It’s Khan. At least six bad guys. And guns, Eliot.”

Sophie’s little sidearm wouldn’t protect any of them now.


	15. Parker Takes Charge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Parker finds Lily.

Chapter Fifteen—Parker Takes Charge

Parker hated guns.  People had shot at her before. That’s why she was so stealthy.  If you’re stealthy, then people did not have a reason to shoot you.  And it hurt to get shot. 

Lily was standing in front of the hotel, shivering since she hadn’t grabbed her jacket, which was in the other room from where she made her escape.  Parker could tell she was boiling mad, but that didn’t matter.  They had to lay low until this storm blew over. 

“Can’t I get at least one second alone,” Lily grumped.

“Nope, kid.  Bad guys don’t care if you’re pissed off about your situation. Plus, it’s cold out here.”

“I don’t want to go back in there.”

“You don’t have a choice at the moment.”

The deepness of the snow muffled the sounds of footsteps approaching, but Parker still heard them because of the number of people approaching. The black of their suits stood out against the whiteness of the background.  Her danger sense blared red alert.  Taking Lily’s unwilling arm, Parker turned and practically had to drag her back into the lobby, looking for a place to hide.  She hoped that the bad guys hadn’t seen her, but she knew that wasn’t likely.  The best she could hope for was they could escape in the upcoming chaos.  And also hope that no one would get hurt.

“Move,” she yelled, hoping to light a fire under the teenager so that she’d comply.

Hardison’s yell of surprise coincided with her yell to move.  That meant that Eliot was probably on his way also. Eliot couldn’t stop bullets, nor could Sophie convince them to put the guns down.  This was not going to turn out the way they thought it was going to.  Getting out of town and regrouping had been the best plan, but right now, they’d be lucky if one of them didn’t get shot.

A look of surprise passed over the person at the desk in the hotel lobby.

“Can I help you?” the guy asked as Parker towed Lily through the lobby.

“Get down, now,” Parker commanded.

The guy looked at her like she was crazy but slowly ducked. His eyes went wide when he saw what was outside the doors.  He must have hit an automatic lock on them because they didn’t open like they normally did when someone approached. That would give Parker a few more moments to get Lily out of there.

In any other circumstance, Parker would have been out of danger quickly, but with Lily in tow, it wasn’t going to happen.  The best scenario would be to run through and to the back, alluding capture. 

The glass in the lobby started to shatter when the goons started to open fire.  Lily’s screaming startled Parker a bit, but she knew her job.  Protect the girl. Get her the hell out of there. She just hoped that her team didn’t walk in on all the chaos.


	16. We Need A Plan.  Now!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The gang try to figure out a plan to get everyone to safety while dodging the bad guys.

Chapter Sixteen—We Need A Plan.  Now!

“Shit, Parker.”

This was what Eliot hoped wouldn’t happen.  The snow would inhibit any sort of backup by the locals or the agencies. How they traced Lily and the team to the hotel was baffling unless they had picked up that the team was involved somehow.  Eliot thought they had been discreet. Not discreet enough apparently.

As Eliot turned the corner to the lobby, glass shattered inward. Were those goons crazy? Shooting up a hotel lobby?

“Parker, location?”

“West hallway,” Parker calmly told him.

Eliot knew they were in the opposite part of the hotel, which meant Parker was running with the girl.  Before Sophie ran into the line of fire, Eliot grabbed her around the waist and stopped her forward progress.

“Parker’s got her,” he informed the grifter. “She’s alright.”

“They made us. How?”  Nate was right. Now did Khan know they were on the move? 

“Me. It has to be me,” Sophie told the other two.

With that, Sophie’s phone rang. Nate took Sophie’s arm and steered her back into the hallway.

“Eliot, get them out of here,” Nate urged.

Just then, the fire alarm started to blare.  Either someone tripped it because of the commotion in the lobby, or the goons were trying to flush them out by pulling it.  There was no way to circumvent it now that it was blasting.  Eliot took off to the nearest door as Nate practically had to drag Sophie back to the room where Hardison had parked himself.

Finding the business center unoccupied, Eliot opened the window and climbed out, hoping to find Parker and the girl and get them to safety.  Parker was smart, probably smarter than either Sophie or Hardison when it came to hiding.  She’d protect the girl, doing what she had to do to get the job done.

Off to his right, he spotted slight movement in the parking lot. He wouldn’t have even caught it if it wasn’t for him moving his head a little to make sure the window was closed tight just in case the goons searched the hotel. He could hear sirens off in the distance but judging by the sound, it still would take them quite some time to get through this snow and on the scene.  That still did not guarantee they could escape unnoticed.

The snow was starting to come down so hard his footsteps were almost filled in as he stepped.  His phone had said four to six inches, but if he was a betting man, he thought it would be feet instead of inches. Working his way around the cars, he spotted a boot, which had to be Parker’s.  Rounding the corner, he didn’t anticipate that Parker might be waiting for an assailant.  He barely missed being tazed by her.

“Parker, what the hell?” he grounded out, not wanting anyone in the vicinity to hear.  A few people had trickled out of the hotel at the back of it because of the fire alarm.

“Lost my comm in all the commotion. What do we do?”

“Nate and Sophie are gonna get Hardison. We gotta get out of here. Sounds like help is on the way, but with this snow, it might be an hour or more before they get here.”

“So, we hang out until they get here, steal a cop car, and make tracks.”

Lily stared wide-eyed at Parker’s suggestion.

“Wish it was that simple.  They somehow tracked us here.”

“It wasn’t me. I swear,” Lily told the two.

Eliot hoped it wasn’t her, but he wouldn’t know unless they literally tracked her to the back of the hotel in the next few minutes.  He seriously didn’t think she had anything on her either, but it could have been in her backpack.

“Listen, Lily. Those guys mean business.  Do you have anything, I mean anything they could have used as a tracker.”

The poor girl didn’t even have a jacket on, only a sweater.

“I know.  I’m sorry.  I took all my jewelry off. My watch too.  You left my phone.  The people guarding me bought that backpack. The only other thing I had with me was my stuffie.”

“Stuffie?” Eliot asked.

“I have Mr. Bunny,” Parker added.

“Mine is Pudgy. He’s a pig.  My mum gave her to me when I was little.”

So, Lily’s aunt hid some kind of tracker in the girl’s stuffed animal.  That had to be it.

“And it’s back in the room?”

“Yes.”

“Nate? Did you hear that?”

“On it.”

It took a few seconds for Nate to search the stuffed animal.

“We’ve been made, folks.  Sophie, out the window.”

Eliot could see off in the distance as Hardison bailed out first.  Sophie came next as Nate helped her over the window sill.  Then Nate was last, closing the window.

“Nothing identifying left?” Eliot inquired as he made his way over to the other three.

“Nothing. Although we have made progress.”

“And?”

“Abigail wants to meet,” Sophie explained as they made it to the van.

“Yes. She wants the money.”

“But, what about me?”

Eliot could see by the look on Nate’s face that the girl was now expendable.  Khan didn’t care about the girl’s safety. He only wanted his money now that the team had the girl.

“It’s Omar’s fault.  She wouldn’t do that to me.”

“Options?” Nate asked.

“No way we’re gettin’ this van out of here any time soon.  Those cops will show up, probably with those pissed off agents we lost at the inn.  I’ve been monitoring everything.  It doesn’t look like anyone has been hurt, yet.  But I don’t think it’s gonna stay that way.”

“How many, Hardison?”

“Six goons, plus Khan.  He’s with them, believe it or not.  Guy is vain.”

“So, there’s seven. I say we pick them off one by one.”

“Eliot, need I remind you that there are guns,” Sophie told the hitter.

“We can’t get out of here. We’re snowed in. If we wait much longer, then a civilian is going to get hurt.”

“We have one gun, one taser, and an Eliot. What more do we need?” Parker announced with a smirk on her face.

“We need a plan. Now.”


	17. This Better Not Be Plan M

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hardison leads Eliot to the bad guys while Parker was leading them on a wild goose chase.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've always imagined Plan M as being the one plan where it all goes to hell. Not that this is going to happen. But still. That's what Hardison thinks. Oh, btw, a tiny bit of swearing in this chapter.

Chapter Seventeen—This Better Not Be Plan M

As plans went, this one was pretty simple. Those goons were going to split up at some point to find Lily and the team.  When they did that, then Eliot could get to work doing what he did best:  neutralizing the bad guys.

Hardison would help all he could, but he just couldn’t punch like Eliot could.  Working from the van, he would lead Eliot to the goons. Nate wanted to go in too, but Eliot wouldn’t agree to Nate putting himself in the line of fire.  So, they agreed that Parker could go and scout the place out, but under no circumstances would she engage.  It made Hardison nervous enough to let Eliot go in there and take those guys on. 

“Parker, you sure?”

“It’s just leading them on a wild goose chase.  They’re not going to find me.”

He hoped that she was right.  Putting that taser up against guns was not an even match, even if Parker was good at hiding.

This job was one clusterfuck added on to many other clusterfucks.  They didn’t do kidnappings on the fly. They didn’t deal with international terrorists on the fly. Only they did more than once. As luck would have it, trouble always found them, not the other way around. And this was a young girl involved.  Both Eliot and Nate were chomping at the bit to get this solved, if just for Sophie’s sake.  Plus, it was a kid, and all made it even more urgent.

“They have guns,” Lily pointed out.

“We have an Eliot,” Parker answered as they climbed in the back of the van.

Eliot handed the gun back to Nate to protect them in the van. Hardison just hoped that it didn’t come down to that pea shooter that Sophie had carried in her bag.  Sure, Nate was probably a decent shot, but there were four of them almost like sitting ducks if Parker and Eliot failed in their mission.

“Alright folks. Looks like the six goons with Khan are still in the lobby.  All the guests have avoided the lobby, going out the side doors. Five of them have dark hair, beards, and dark suits. One is blonde, possibly European in origin.  Pulling them up on facial recognition”

Hardison found all but one of them on several law enforcement sites. 

“Listen y’all, all those guys are wanted. Sending their info to the locals just in case.”

“Just don’t get me shot by the locals,” Eliot said as he entered the hotel from the back.

“Gotcha.  Letting them know that there’s an undercover officer on scene. Got your badge?”

“Yeah, got my badge.”

“Parker, be careful.”

“Always am.  Oh, looks like the ventilation shaft for the ground floor is big enough for me.  Alright,” Parker cheered.

“Parker, at the first sign of trouble,” Nate reminded the thief.

“Got it.”

“They’re splitting up into teams of two. Two east, two west and two in the lobby still.”

“I’m on it.  Going west.”

“Probably going for the room with the pig in it.”

“Yep.”

The lighting in the hallway was pretty bright, so Hardison could see what was going on through the security camera. If they went into a room, he wouldn’t be able to see what Eliot saw. Eliot was pretty much on his own once that happened.

The two goons entered the room slowly, guns drawn and ready.  Hardison could barely hear Eliot’s breathing as he got ready to take these two out for good. The first one went down quickly with an elbow and a right hook at the door. Eliot was huffing and puffing as he fought the next one. It seemed to take forever for the guy to go down, but Hardison knew it was only seconds.  Hardison could only catch glimpses through the open doorway.  The sounds of crunching bone never did get old because it mostly meant the bad guys were getting their asses whooped.  Tangled feet appeared near the doorway. As quickly as the fight had started, it was over. 

“Two down,” Eliot called out, the door to the room closing quickly and quietly.  “Four more to go.”


	18. Sophie's Worried

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to all who have commented so far.

Chapter Eighteen—Sophie’s Worried

Eliot was almost fighting blindly. It worried Sophie that he was putting himself in danger a bit more than he usually did.  These guys meant business and wouldn’t hesitate to shoot Eliot without pausing.

Nate had wanted to talk to her about the phone call and what her sister said, but Lily was sitting in the van, crouched down under a blanket that they kept stored for emergencies.  The girl looked so lost and alone sitting on the floor, blanket tightly around her shoulders.

“What if I just go back with my mom?  I mean. You know what I mean.”

“You won’t be safe,” Sophie told the girl, hoping that she realized that she was in danger even more now.

“It might stop them from hurting your friends.  My mum would never hurt anyone.”

Sophie thought back to all the times that Abigail had hurt her, treated her like a second-class citizen instead of family. 

“Lily, we will get to the bottom of this.  I have no idea what Abigail has done.  We just don’t want you to get hurt.”

“Why?  Why did you leave?  I’ve known. I mean, I kinda knew she wasn’t my real mom.  The staff, they talk. I’m good at hiding and listening. The fact that Grandmama was always the one in charge. I don’t remember my father.”

Now was not the time to tell Lily that her father wasn’t the nicest man.

“I know he, I heard that he wasn’t the nicest person in the world.”

It was almost like she was reading Sophie’s mind.  Sophie saw Nate’s eyes shift slightly to her, like he wanted to hear the story too but didn’t want to appear that he was eavesdropping. Besides, he needed to concentrate on Eliot not dying and Parker getting out of there without getting hurt.

“Understand Lily that no matter what, we will make sure that you’re safe.”

Nate barked another order as he watched the screens Hardison had in the van.

“Is your friend going to die?” Lily asked innocently.

“He’s very good at what he does.”

Better to change the subject than start a conversation that Sophie wasn’t willing to finish, especially with Nate sitting right beside her.  Nate knew of William. And that wasn’t much unless he had Hardison dig up any more information after the job in London. 

Sophie’s job was not conducive to having children. Sophie’s job on the team was definitely not conducive to having children. They put their lives in jeopardy quite often to help people.  As Sophie focused on the screens, willing Eliot and Parker to stay safe, she hoped that when this was over, things could change.  Thirteen years had passed, so she didn’t think she could have a real mother/daughter relationship with Lily.  Being friends though, that might be possible.

“Eliot, go left. Bogey up ahead.”

Lily folded her legs into her body, arms gripping them tightly.  The girl was scared of what might happen.  No matter what, she would be protected. Abigail could not get away with this any longer.  The warmth that Nate generated right next to her combined with the smell of the orange soda that Hardison had opened calmed her mind a little. They had to fix this, dammit.


	19. Confrontation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nate's plan starts to come together.

Chapter Nineteen--Confrontation

Sophie had a child?  Nate couldn’t even start to wrap his mind around the fact that Sophie had a thirteen-year-old daughter, who sat mere feet from him, draped in a New England Patriots blanket that Nate had sworn was in his apartment, but had lost track of it. He wondered when it had disappeared. 

Nate had actively attempted to figure out Sophie’s background years ago.  She’d hidden it very well. He didn’t even know about the Charlotte alias until it had been brought up during the job to infiltrate Moreau’s network. The fact that Sophie had ties to these people, although she was conning them at the time, made Nate realize that he still didn’t know much about Sophie.  Would it be a good idea to sit her down after this was over and make her tell him it all?  Would she lie though? She had lied before.

He did know that this changed everything, the way the team would operate, how Sophie would operate with the team.  There was a child involved now, even if Sophie thought she didn’t deserve to have a relationship with Lily.

Nate watched as Eliot took down two more guys. Two more to go, unless there were more out of sight of the cameras.

“Nate, I have eyes on Khan,” Parker whispered.

Hardison switched from camera to camera, not locating the terrorist.

“Just out of sight of the camera in the lobby. He’s talking to someone on the phone.”

“Abigail,” Sophie murmured, not wanting Lily to hear.

“Uh, guys. We have trouble. I just spotted two other guys outside. Where did they come from?”

Shit, Nate was wondering if there were more goons.  Someone like Omar Khan didn’t travel light. And Eliot wasn’t anywhere near to be able to help. Nate checked the gun again, making sure if he needed to use it, it wouldn’t fail him. Sophie’s light touch on his arm had him shielding the action from Lily.

“Lily, Lily. Please come out now.  We’re here to take you home.”

“Fuck,” Nate whispered.

Sophie tensed beside him, reaching out a hand to him in reassurance.  What he didn’t understand until later that her gesture was the prelude to her actually taking the weapon out of his hand. Dammit, he should have realized that she would take matters in her own hands. That’s just what Sophie Devereaux would do to protect her own, especially her newly found daughter and her team.

Before Nate could grab her, she was out in the blizzard with just her gun and her wits.  Most of the time, he would bet on Sophie coming out on top.  But this was her sister.  Her emotions were high.  He’d only seen her out of control a few times in her life and those times only dealt with him. 

“Shit, Sophie. Hardison, eta on those locals?”

“I, I don’t know.  Maybe ten minutes. With this weather? No idea.”

“Lily, stay with Hardison. Do not, under any circumstances come out that door. No matter what you hear. Understand?”

Nate tried to have his stern father face on, but he could tell by the look on Lily’s face, that he was probably scaring her more than necessary.

“I got it, Nate,” was all Hardison said as the man turned to watch Lily.

Nate could see off in the distance a woman dressed in white, even her boots.  As he approached Sophie slowly, he saw the dark hair sticking out of the hood of the woman.  Her red lips stood out starkly against the rest of her outfit. This was what Sophie would look like if she was on a job, conning people out of their money. 

The gun that Sophie had lifted from him was nowhere to be seen, but he bet that she had it handy just in case.  Her hair hung limply down her back. She’d forgotten her gloves. Flexing her hands to warm them up, he watched as she straightened her spine, attempting to turn into the Sophie Devereaux that he knew and loved.

“Oh, dear love, what are you doing here?” the woman called out.

“Protecting Lily. From you and Khan.”

“We only want what’s best for her. She’s mine. You left her.”

“I’m not here to discuss the past. You will not use her as a pawn anymore.”

Nate wanted to speak up, to help Sophie out in any way he could.  He’d let her deal with her sister up to a point. And if they survived this, he would be in deep trouble if his plan that was being formed as they spoke to each other worked.  Sophie might never forgive him.

“You can have Lily,” Nate finally shouted, trying to be heard over the wind whipping around them.

He could barely see in front of him since the snow was now turning into a blizzard.

Sophie’s hands were now forming into balls. He’d felt the sting of her punches before. At least he’d have a better landing spot if she threw one his way.

“But not her money. That’s all gone. Do you understand? You get the girl. She keeps the money.”

“We agreed,” Abigail started.

“I didn’t agree,” Nate countered.

It was like slowly approaching a ticking time bomb that looked like Sophie. If he played his cards right, this would be over sooner than later.  Sophie’s hair was now coated with snow, her hands probably cold as ice. He didn’t want to scare Sophie, chancing that his move would be anticipated.

“It’s not your money,” Abigail said as she moved forward.

“Oh, but it is. Right, sweetheart?”

Nate had never been possessive of Sophie and would never be.  Sure, he was jealous on occasion, particularly during jobs where she had to play a part in seducing a mark.  Now he had to be possessive of Sophie, show her that all she had accomplished over the years was now his and his only.  He was counting on Abigail not knowing who Sophie really was. She never thought highly of her older sister anyway.  Why not use that?

To make it believable, he hoped that Sophie’s reaction would fit his actions perfectly. As his arm came around her middle, he yanked Sophie against his front, hardening his face as he did.

“Nate,” Sophie trembled.

“You think that Sophie Devereaux could pull off all those schemes on her own?”

“You know nothing…”

Sophie gripped his hand, working her fingers underneath the arm of the coat. Her hands were frigid and had started shaking.  He slowed his breathing, working his other hand into the pocket of her coat where she had stored the gun. This was one of those times he was glad that Sophie was tall so that he didn’t have to lower his head to her ear. Her breathing started to match his own, just like he had planned.  Even though he couldn’t look her in the eyes and tell her the plan, he was almost certain she would know what he was planning.

“He’s right. I can’t, I gave up that right.”

Sophie sounded meek, but Nate knew she was anything but that. 

“You didn’t. You stupid bitch. Always thinking with your heart instead of your brain.  How could you?  He’s a con man.”

Abigail was taking how they were acting just as he had planned.

“It’s just, he’s…”

“You fool. Just like you were with William. You fell in love with the mark.  William was an idiot.”

“Just like Khan is an idiot?” Nate pointed out.  “You weren’t going to give the money to Khan to use. You had no intention of using it for his terrorist network.”

“Men are so gullible. You know that, Sophie. That’s your name now. Right?  I let Khan think what he wants to think.”

“Abby, just let Lily go,” Sophie begged.

“Not until that bitch gives me my money. She’ll be dead soon. Then I will be the Countess of Kensington.”

Nate just smirked her way.  “Sophie never divorced William.  That means your marriage is not valid. All that money and prestige? All mine.”

“You married this fool?  What on earth is he talking about?” Abigail yelled.

“I couldn’t stop,” Sophie stammered.  “He’s very convincing. I love him, Abby.”

“Oh god, spare me the speech.  Take what is yours.  Didn’t you learn over the years? I’ve been taking men’s money, just as I am going to take Khan for everything he has.”

“Oh, you are?”

Nate was counting on Parker leading Khan to where they were now.

“Omar, dear.  We just must find Lily. Sophie dear was just getting ready to hand over the money.”

“No, she’s not,” Nate countered. “Khan, Abigail was taking you for a ride. She had no intention of handing over the money from her sister. As a matter of fact, she was going to take it all in addition to all the money from the Countess of Kensington and leave you out in the cold.  How much do you owe the Saudis? A hundred million? More?  Those hitmen that are after you? How long will it be before they catch up with you?”

Nate had put two and two together.  Under no circumstances would Khan come along on a job unless he was desperate.  He had borrowed a substantial amount of money to fund his extracurriculars, so who might just fund that stream of income?  Nate was lucky he had guessed right, only going on bits of information that Hardison had pulled from the ether.  Khan had made a trip to Saudi Arabia right before coming to the United States.

“You bitch. I need my money now,” Khan insisted.

In unison, Nate had been slowly maneuvering Sophie back out of the way. If things were going to go as he thought they would, Abigail was in deep trouble.  He just hoped that Sophie would not leap to her defense.

“She has your money. I told you.”

“Yes, you told me. You told me that the Countess was going to be dead soon and she’s not. You told me that your sister had a substantial amount of money. And now all I’ve gotten from you are promises that you cannot keep.  You’ve brought me to my destruction if I can’t fulfill my promise of paying the Saudi contingent back. You’re all grifters and conmen.  Why I ever let you in my bed.”

“Omar, I’ve always been truthful to you. She has my money.”

“Her money?” Nate heard Sophie mumble.

“Technically it’s not yours either,” Nate pointed out.

“I worked hard for that money.”

“You did. But remember? It’s now mine.”

“You really think that I’d give you everything once we were married. You are such a fool. An adorable fool, but a fool nonetheless.”

Now they were just stalling for time. Both Omar and Abigail stared at them like they’d grown two heads. Sophie had turned her body to face Nate, hands working underneath his coat to warm them up.  He had flinched just a bit once he felt how icy they were.

“You know, I have a hacker.”

“It doesn’t mean he found everything.”

“Oh, I think he did. Did you check?  That warehouse in LA? The one in London? Madrid? Dubai?”

Sophie’s eyes widened at his declaration.  He had found out more information on all her safehouses and where she had her loot stored. He’d never mentioned it to her but held it close to the vest to use on an occasion he’d need the information. Now was one of those times.

“See, Omar.  You can get them to tell you anything in the heat of passion.”

It was obvious by the look on Omar’s face that Abigail had told him little but what she wanted him to know.  Sophie had never told him much either, but they didn’t know that.

“Well, isn’t that nice and cozy. I still have Lily. She’s mine. I will be the Countess very soon.”

“One problem with that. Remember that Sophie never divorced William.”

Abigail’s eyes went wide.  “Oh, dear sister. That means you never really married William,” Sophie chided.

Omar’s temper got the best of him. The snow had deepened as they stood there conning both Abigail and Omar. Omar couldn’t really move that fast, but he was on Abigail before Nate had time to move.  Only he was thrown to the side by Eliot flying out of nowhere. The snow softened his fall, but also helped in the fact that Omar could not get any purchase on the ground, making his flailing movements virtually impossible to connect with any vital part of Eliot. Eliot was able to shove the man’s face into the snow.

Nate was also astonished that Sophie could move that fast, cornering her sister with that gun that she kept lifting from him. They’d have to have a long conversation about her taking control of the job.

“No, dear sister. You are not getting out of this one.  You left Lily to the wolves.”

“Which I should have done ages ago, but that woman… I deserve that money, that title. It’s mine.”

“No, it’s mine, dear Mummy.”

Dammit, Nate had told Hardison to make sure the girl stayed put.

“Grandmama had warned me early on that you were not to be trusted.  I thought she was wrong, by the way.  She was not.  You were going to sell me to the highest bidder?  What?  Were you going to get rid of me once Grandmama passed?”

“I never. I love you, my dear.”

“Strange way of showing it.  Omar was going to kill all of us.”

Nate could hear sirens off in the distance.  They would all have to clear out to not be seen.

“Nate, we can’t just leave her with those agents.”

“We have to.”

“Don’t worry, Soph. Agent Hagen and Thomas to the rescue.”

Parker appeared out of nowhere, taser in hand.  It didn’t take Parker long to shock Sophie’s sister and drag the woman to the back door of the hotel.

“Did she just…? Lily started.

“Well, yeah, she does that.”

“You know, you two might want to get out of sight before the real feds show up. We got this,” Hardison said as he tipped Sophie’s gun down to point at the ground.

Sophie slumped up against Nate.  “I have to, Lily. I just don’t know what to say.”

“How about you come visit me. Then we’ll see. Grandmama will want to know that you’re alive.”

Sophie almost told her daughter that her grandmother did know that Sophie was alive, but like the good grifter that she was, she didn’t volunteer that information because right at that moment, it wasn’t necessary. Instead, Sophie very hesitantly gathered up her daughter and hugged her tight.

“Just do everything Parker and Hardison tell you to do. No lifting of any weapons. Understand?”

“You act like it’s a bad thing.”

“Bad. Very bad,” Eliot said as he was kneeing Omar in the back.

“Yeah, not a good idea,” Parker agreed from the doorway.

“No,” Nate added.

“No guns,” they all answered in unison.

“So those two are married?” Lily asked Eliot as he put more pressure on Omar’s back.

“Oh god no.”

“Well, I mean, no,” Nate stammered as he held Sophie’s shivering body to his.

“Darling, we are just friends.”

“Right,” Lily answered with a bit of sarcasm in her voice.


	20. Sophie's Change of Status

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sophie needs to figure out her relationship with her daughter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's the end of this fic. I leave it open-ended because I think I'll continue it in the near future. Not like I don't have a few fics to finish up. I do have a conclusion to one that I've been attempting to finish. And another long one in the works. Thanks to all who have read and commented. Sorry I haven't replied back. I will. I get total anxiety for no reason when I read comments. No idea why. All of you are lovely people.

Chapter Twenty—Sophie’s Change of Status

Sophie did not want to leave her daughter with those people, but she knew that she had to trust that they would now handle it all and get her home safely.  Now that the enemy was successfully eliminated, Lily would be safer. Her grandmama would see to that.

It had been a few weeks since the showdown in the parking lot.  Nate had been very quiet about her change in status.  In her mind, he was being a bit standoffish.  She had tried to call him out on it once but was shot down. She hoped that he was just trying to work it out in his mind about what they really were to each other and how Lily was going to fit in that scheme.

“Auntie invited me. To see Lily,” Sophie started as she cornered Nate in the kitchen early that morning.

Just because Nate wasn’t talking didn’t mean he didn’t want to do other things with her. She knew she could count on him wanting her company. So, she set this up very carefully.  Confronting him in bed would only make him pull away.  Early morning when he had barely any caffeine or alcohol in his system would help her plan.  Plus, the fact that he was now at least a bit more relaxed having been woken up by her tongue in places that he truly loved.  His shirt clung to her body; buttons open to show him that she had nothing else on underneath. 

“You should go,” he announced as he poured himself coffee.

“I want you to come with me.”

“I’m not sure…”

“I am sure.  I know this is hard.”

“You don’t understand how hard this is.”

She had been waiting for him to confront her.  Adding a child to the mix was going to complicate their relationship. Not that it wasn’t complicated as it was.  Nate closed his eyes as he took a sip of his coffee.  Probably trying to shut her out, working a plan in his head.

“There’s nothing I can do to change the fact that I have a daughter. I made a decision a long time ago that I thought was right.  And I still think that decision was valid.  I wasn’t ready then to be a mother. Maybe I am now. At least I can be her friend.”

“Then you’ll have to do it alone.”

Now that was not what she was counting on.  He had always had her back.  Why was he pushing back now?

“Alright. If you can’t handle…”

“It has nothing to do with what I can’t handle.”

“But it does. You’ve been ignoring that it ever happened for weeks.  I can’t just go on with what’s between us.”

“What’s between us?  Remember you said that this was casual.”

Sophie could see how hurt he was just by his stance. Taking the coffee cup out of his hand, she pulled him to her, making him look directly into her eyes.

“There is nothing casual about this. There never has been. And that’s what scares you.  You’re afraid of Lily and what she means.”

“No, that’s not…”

“But it is, Nate.  You can barely show your feelings to me.”

“I’ve already lost one child.”

Sophie had figured out early on that he would either balk at having another person taking time away from him, which meant he was shallow, or he would balk because a child would be in the mix and remind him of all that he was missing.

Instead of pulling away from her, he dropped his head to her shoulder. If that was as deep as Nate Ford would go with her, she’d take it.

“If you’ve opened up your heart for me, isn’t there a little more room?”

“It’s not that.”

“You’re scared. I am too.”

Nate raised his head to look at her again.  “Nothing scares Sophie Devereaux.”

“You’d be surprised. You scare me. Every day.”

She could see he was taken aback by her announcement.

“You also make me feel like I could do anything.  Even with all your crazy ideas, crazy schemes, I know deep down you’d never hurt me intentionally.”

“Maybe that’s why I’m scared of her.  What if I did get you hurt? Or her?”

“I trust you.”

That was all she could give Nate, her loyalty and her trust, even though he drove her crazy sometimes.  The fact that he was still holding her, not pushing her away like he probably would have done that first year meant they both had made significant progress. Of course, she could still read him like no other, watching as his eyes lit up at what she had confessed to him.  It didn’t take him long to close the distance between them, lips crashing together.  Like he told her during a few years before that he needed her, her trusting him was probably just as significant.

His hand settled against her hip, body aligned with hers.  Off in the distance, Sophie thought she heard a door slam, but by what Nate was doing to her mouth and her body, she ignored it.  Another slam had him reacting finally because she most certainly was floating from what his mouth was doing to her.

A bag of groceries appeared on the kitchen counter along with a gallon of milk. Eliot had come into the apartment, made as much noise as possible, hoping to not catch them in a compromising position.  He was lucky it hadn’t gone any further.

“Go, now. I have food to make,” Eliot announced as he opened the refrigerator to put the milk away.

Another slam announced the arrival of the other two. Sophie looked down at her attire and realized that she probably should get dressed. Walking around in one of Nate’s shirts wasn’t the best idea.

“Oh. Did we interrupt something?” Parker said as she came around the counter and grabbed an apple.

“Nice outfit,” Hardison joked.

Nate just sighed, grabbing back his coffee cup to down what he had left.  Eliot thrust a teacup in her hand to get her moving.

“Go. Chop, chop.  We have a trip to plan.”

“Trip?”

“Yeah. Aren’t we going to England to see my sister?”  Sophie shook her head at Parker’s sentence. “Well, I mean I guess I could be her aunt. I’ve never been an aunt.  Gotta show her how to pick locks.”

“What?” Sophie asked.

“Lily. Since she’s now a part of the family, she has to learn how to pick locks.”

Nate groaned as he got out of Eliot’s way, exiting the kitchen as fast as he could.


End file.
